How Airbnb Reinvented Itself As the World’s Crisis-Housing Provider

Photo: Bernd Wüstneck/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images Earlier this month, as millions of refugees fled the war in Ukraine, a website launched in 2008 by a couple of guys looking to monetize an air mattress on the floor became an unlikely vector for direct monetary aid: Inspired by a handful of influencers, Airbnb users started booking stays in cities like Kyiv, encouraging their hosts to pocket the money.

With Airbnb.org, the company has elevated itself to the level of critical infrastructure, stepping in to offer its services in times of disaster as disparate as an ill child or a hurricane or a war. In its initiative for Ukraine, the millions of dollars Airbnb.org has raised to date will be routed back to existing aid organizations, and some of those refugee-placement services will use Airbnb.org money to pay Airbnb.com hosts.

The company saw an opportunity in Sandy: Its engineers created a disaster-response tool that would eventually become known as Open Homes, essentially a free version of Airbnb that connected hosts interested in donating housing with groups who demonstrated a need. As Open Homes grew, the forums in which the company’s hosts gossip soon filled with “horror” stories about guests they began to resent for their free stays. One woman in the U.K. wrote a lengthy post about opening her vacation cottage to medical workers whose “story didn’t ring quite true in a number of ways” and had an “air of entitlement.” “I feel used,” she said.

According to Airbnb’s founder, 35 percent of Afghan refugees in the United States are being housed in properties its users are renting out, and the company says it has facilitated free housing for 54,000 refugees to date from countries including Syria, Venezuela, and Afghanistan. But in many cases, it’s been nearly impossible to place those refugees in long-term housing. Rents are simply too high.

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