Roofs and refuges

Why Airbnb might not be the solution.

Beautiful ruin, Sicily. Photo tony@tonyamos.com

I’ve been thinking about roofs this week.

Not our roof, which fortunately survived Sydney’s weeks of rain. We’re in an old art deco apartment, solidly built in 1936. When the heavens opened, we were really grateful for that.

Having ‘a roof over our heads’ is the major concern of millions of displaced people right now.

The Ukrainians fleeing their homeland are the most visible, compounding the misery of people who have already fled other wars and invasions across the globe these past twenty years and more.

At the end of 2020 there were already over 82 million people forcibly displaced by war, including 26.4 million refugees across international borders, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates.

In Australia, a long way from the trauma of Ukraine, in a wealthy country free of military conflict, we’ve been horrified by Biblical-strength floods along the east coast, a waterlogged mirror of the apocalyptic bushfires of two summers ago.

Thousands of people have lost their homes and face an uncertain future. Housing is already at crisis point in much of Australia, particularly in the Northern Rivers region that saw the worst floods.

The Australian Prime Minister, helpfully, says, ‘I think is just an obvious fact in Australia is getting hard to live in because of these disasters’ without taking any responsibility for the ten years of climate vandalism from his political party.

One-in-a-hundred-year floods every couple of years. Raging bushfires every other year. We don’t need war to displace people. Indifference will do as much.

Climate change is already exacerbating homelessness around the world. In richer countries, so is affordability and availability. National figures in Australia show that there are only three out of 75,000 rental listings that a person on income support, Jobkeeper, could afford to rent.

Three residences across Australia are affordable to someone on income support. Total.

Also this - 240,000 women aged 55 or older are homeless or in risk of it. It’s a staggering number.

Unaffordable housing is a serious and growing problem in many wealthy countries where ‘residential capitalism’ (housing for capital accumulation rather than consumption) has become a dominant economic force.

Short-stay rental accommodation for travellers, such as Airbnb, is part of the problem.

I’m not a fan of Airbnb, to be honest. In the beginning, the platform seemed a wonderful idea. People were actively hosting guests in a spare bedroom or empty granny flat. But then it became an investment mechanism and a part of what is aggravating long term housing shortages.

‘From New York City to San Francisco, Boston, Barcelona and Sydney, a growing number of studies show that cities and regions affected by rental shortages as well as strong demand for tourist accommodation, are particularly susceptible to the impacts of Airbnb style platforms,’ according to an article in Sciencedirect.

I know many people prefer Airbnb and other short-term rental services to hotels, not only because it’s often cheaper but because it affords an experience that’s closer to what it’s really like living in a place. And I’m all for that.

But they also might be, wittingly or unwittingly, part of the housing problem, especially if they book a room in a city like Hobart, where rental vacancy rate is 0.9%.

It’s worth thinking about before you make a booking in short-stay accommodation.

Some ideas: Make sure the place you rent is directly from the owner, not a big management company that might have dozens or even hundreds of apartments. Choose rentals away from cities with low vacancy rates if you can. Steer yourself towards owners who seem to have a real pride in their place and enjoyment of hosting.

To circle back to Ukraine, I was fascinated to see a scheme to help the Ukrainian people that is operating via Airbnb.

Could platforms like this be a force for good?

Spurred by an idea from an Instagram account, people are booking Ukraine stays on Airbnb for nights they obviously won’t be using, as a way to get money directly in the pockets of the hosts. Airbnb has agreed to waive its fees.

The platform says 61,000 nights were booked in 48 hours in Ukraine last week. On March 2 and 3, more than 34,000 nights were booked by US users, over 3,000 from Canadians and over 8,000 from the UK.

Airbnb is also offering 100,000 free rooms to Ukrainian refugees. There’s a dedicated page if you want to host a refugee this way.

In addition, the British government has just launched a website offering a fee to anyone who hosts a refugee family from Ukraine. Benedict Cumberbatch has weighed in offering a room in his own home.

There is also this organisation in Australia.

There has been plenty of warm feedback from Airbnb owners in Ukraine on the site. ‘Thank you very much for your help, which is so much needed now,’ one host in Kyiv wrote. ‘I have been standing in line for food since the morning, which I can now buy with the money you sent.’

But everything is nuanced.

Some argue that Airbnb bookings in Ukraine might be well-intentioned but there’s the possibility that the donation may be going to property managers that aren’t even based in Ukraine.

And, of course, the money goes to people who have the luxury of a spare room or apartment to rent out. It doesn’t reach the vast majority of people who are displaced. (There are about 300 Airbnb listings across Ukraine.)

I can’t say I know what is best for an individual to do to help the Ukrainian people. Some schemes make you feel good without really contributing much to helping those in need. Here’s a good list of where you can help via Global Citizen.

I do know that a roof over our heads is no longer something we can take for granted, wherever we are.

If you’re a traveller who regularly uses Airbnb, or even a host, perhaps you have a different point of view?