Airbnb pledges $500M to expand emergency stays amid housing-relief questions

The short-term rental platform will fund the expansion by donating 10 cents from every booking and make up any shortfall, according to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. The aim is to scale up to eventually provide 1 million nights of free housing each year.

Airbnb.org, launched formally in 2020 as the company went public, uses company-donated credits to book stays for those experiencing crises. It reports having provided 1.6 million nights of free, temporary housing in nearly 140 countries. Beneficiaries include people recovering from natural disasters, families travelling for medical care and survivors escaping domestic violence. Fees are dropped and hosts are compensated.

Airbnb.org's new funding model has resurfaced questions about the charitable endeavours of a corporation criticised by some affordable housing advocates for worsening the supply of lower-cost residential housing. Murray Cox, founder of the data activist project Inside Airbnb, noted one "crisis" missing from the nonprofit's list of emergency housing interventions.

"There's also the housing crisis that's occurring around the world," Cox said. "And, although they're not causing the housing crisis, they're contributing to it by taking millions of housing units -- residential houses -- off the housing market."

Chesky denied Airbnb is "the contributor of the reason cities are expensive" but acknowledged that some hosts take a small fraction of their area's housing off the market. This week's commitment is about doing the "right thing" with the company's "natural superpower," he said.

"I don't like this idea that somehow you create a nonprofit to make up for or apologize for your core business," Chesky told the Associated Press. "Our core business, independently, is gonna affect a lot more lives than this organization. And our core business needs to be responsible. And if we're doing something that's not responsible, we need to correct it."

Christoph Gorder, executive director of Airbnb.org, compared the nonprofit to "the ambulance that'll get you to the hospital." He said short-term housing is a "great product-market fit" because they can "house a lot of people very quickly with an enormous amount of flexibility to meet their particular needs."

Noah Patton, director of disaster recovery at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said short-term assistance from nonprofits and government entities is "key for preventing that initial displacement." But he called for more lasting solutions so "folks have homes to return back to." "It's a Band-Aid if you don't also focus on the long-term aspect of this," he said.

Airbnb.org will also expand its medical stays program to 20 countries by the end of the year. In Mexico, where the program was piloted, the nonprofit says it has housed medical travellers for nearly 1,500 nights. Diego Parada Herrera, co-founder and CEO of partner organisation Vuela Fundación, said families often camped or slept in cars outside hospitals. "The need was there. And we were conscious of it," he said. "But we didn't know how to address it."

Chesky emphasised that the commitment will be completed regardless of business outcomes. "We felt like this is a responsible number where it's sufficiently big to make a difference in the world," he said. "But it's also a number shareholders can be comfortable with."