I Stayed in an Airbnb Eleven Years Ago and Still Regret It

In May 2012, we stayed in a cute little Airbnb cottage on the Alabama Gulf Coast, and it was super-cute and super-convenient, and the hosts were nice and all, and I’ve felt terrible about it ever since.

Don’t stay in an Airbnb, y’all. Really, don’t.

Not long after we got back, a friend working on the Obama campaign had to book some stays in a majority GOP area.

All of the hosts — all of them — rejected his attempts to book a room.

When I read his tweets about his misadventure, the light finally dawned. Of course. Why hadn’t I seen it before?

This “disruptive” industry was brilliantly designed to be especially disruptive to those of us who thought public accommodations should accommodate all members of the law-abiding public.

Not just those persons who happen to be of the color or political persuasion that the property owner prefers.

Short-term rentals are poison

In 2012, I didn’t know yet the absolutely terrible things Airbnb was going to do to devastate the ability of people to just live their lives in New Orleans or any other city that people might like to visit by making it impossible for them to find affordable rental properties.

Who's going to keep renting out their place for $500 a month to mere tenants when they can rent them for $200 a NIGHT to tourists-- not to mention even more during the Mardi Gras season?

Nobody, that's who.

I didn’t know about the hidden cameras either. Real hotels with a real business license aren't allowed to conceal video cameras in people's rooms on the thin excuse that somebody might steal something.

Airbnb hosts shouldn't be doing it either. People shouldn't have to worry that their private vacation moments are going to be streamed to pervs.

(I realize Airbnb tells hosts not to install hidden cameras. But they're not exactly in any position to know whether the hosts have complied, are they?

A feedback system, by its nature, means that somebody has to be seriously harmed and find out that they've been harmed before they can report it. Your vacation escapades could be flying around the internet for years before you ever figure out the real reason your co-worker no longer looks you in the eye.)

So, yeah, short-term rentals are poison. They're not about "sharing" or "community" or any of that other guff from the previous internet era. They're about making it easier for one class of people to get more money (and maybe more dirty videos) out of others.

I don't really blame myself for not realizing that in 2012. It took a while for those who were harmed-- most seriously, lower-income locals pushed out of their homes and sometimes into homelessness-- to find out how bad the situation was going to get.

Making it easy to discriminate

But what I should have noticed right away— but didn’t — was how Airbnb was set up to make it easy for hosts to quietly discriminate. As in, all they had to do was get on the Google or the Book of Face, and see what color we were or what we believed in before they agreed to accept our request.

I knew there was a delay while they considered my request. I didn’t know what they were doing with it, since my credit card could be validated in seconds.

But it didn’t even occur to me to wonder. Why not? Stupidity, I guess.

The process we went through to book a room guaranteed that hosts could pick, choose, and discriminate at will.

And I gave money to that?

I felt sick and vowed to never again stay in an Airbnb.

And I haven’t.

Since then, Airbnb has been called out and sued for their racist policies, and maybe they’ve fixed some of this, but honestly? As long as they expose the potential guests' names to hosts before the host accepts the booking, then racist and other problematic hosts will continue to discriminate.

Airbnb knows that. And, by now, everybody else knows it too.

Staying in an Airbnb is making a choice to support that business model with your money-- a choice I can't stomach.

Author's Note

A shorter version of this story was originally published on Medium under the title, "I Stayed in an Airbnb Ten Years Ago and Still Regret It," on May 23, 2022. I decided to create this expanded version for 2023.

If you enjoy reading my stories outside the paywall, please leave me a <3 or a comment to let me know.

Photo Note

I took that photo by the pier. If you know the area, you may be wondering where the pebbles came from, since those birds would actually be standing around on concrete. The answer is a different photo I took in the Pacific Northwest. Hey, I needed to practice my Photoshop.