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Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme. I mean, it is good if some

by ssijak 10y ago

Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme. I mean, it is good if someone in need is helped, but why now and why that wording and scope to only refugees?

detaro 10y ago
> other people in need they have done that before, e.g. during hurricane Mathew. "Airbnb is brokering free housing" probably would be a more accurate phrasing, since it is obviously the hosts providing the housing. Airbnb just provides their platform for free.
PeterisP 10y ago
Quantity of people and the time involved. This case is temporary, and hopefully short term - homeless people need a permanent, long term solution. Furthermore, for people like legal US residents who are temporarily locked away from their home, shelter generally solves their problems as they need just shelter; while for homeless people it wouldn't solve their root cause of homelessness which generally comes out to either unemployability, addictions or mental illness. This case also involves much, much less people that the homeless population. In essence, they're choosing to help a smaller problem where they could make a difference instead of a much larger issue that's intractable by those means.
ivan_gammel 10y ago
That's dumb argument, sorry. Disaster relief is temporary and help is provided to people who suffer from external circumstances. Housing for homeless is a daily job for the government and it is different, significantly bigger problem, for which the solution is not affordable for any single private organization or person. Private organizations have limited resources and they have the right to choose whom to support first. Moreover, here the main support comes not from Airbnb, but from the hosts who offer their houses for free. Airbnb contribution here is to provide a web service for hosts and people in the need and not to take money for that.
- syshum 10y ago
  Governments have, and should have, limited resources as well. Where do you think the government obtains its resources.. From private organizations and individuals. Thus if the problem is to large for Private Organizations and Individuals to handle collectively, then it is to hard for government as well Housing for Homeless is also a job the government continually fails at and is infact today primary provided for by private organizations using money donated by private organizations and individuals (at least in the US)
  - GavinMcG 10y ago
    > Thus if the problem is to large for Private Organizations and Individuals to handle collectively, then it is to hard for government as well While that's a trivial tautology, in that the government is the mechanism by which a society acts collectively, it's utterly false in the way that you meant it. Government can coordinate resource deployment more effectively than a hodgepodge of private organizations. > Housing for Homeless is also a job the government continually fails at and is infact today primary provided for by private organizations using money donated by private organizations and individuals Fails at how? The (few) governments that are genuinely pursuing housing the homeless seem to be doing a fine job at it. The ones that are trying to get away with lip service to the idea are, well, getting away with it.
    - syshum 10y ago
      >>Government can coordinate resource deployment more effectively While it is possible for the government do accomplish this in theory, it fails more often than not. Taking in huge amounts of resources including money and wasting them with inefficient bureaucracy and corruption as you have proven with the rest of your comment
  - ivan_gammel 10y ago
    It's indeed hard, but it's exactly one of the purposes the government exists for. It's their job which they have to do to justify their existence. You cannot blame any private for-profit organization for not taking the government's job and spending its money for something else.
beisner 10y ago
I don't think you're giving them enough credit here. I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning). Sure, it would be great if they had thought about this earlier or created a broader program. But you could say the same thing about the public - why only now do we, individual citizens, care enough to act and speak out? Sometimes it takes an action close to home to scare us out of inaction. Companies - even unicorns - are made of people, and those people are just as susceptible to social pressure and zeitgeist as the rest of us.
- exolymph 10y ago
  > I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning). Why not both?
PutinIsEvil 10y ago
PR Nobody cared about the 6 month ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011. This is all manufactured chaos.

by ssijak 10y ago

detaro 10y ago

> other people in need they have done that before, e.g. during hurricane Mathew. "Airbnb is brokering free housing" probably would be a more accurate phrasing, since it is obviously the hosts providing the housing. Airbnb just provides their platform for free.

PeterisP 10y ago

Quantity of people and the time involved. This case is temporary, and hopefully short term - homeless people need a permanent, long term solution. Furthermore, for people like legal US residents who are temporarily locked away from their home, shelter generally solves their problems as they need just shelter; while for homeless people it wouldn't solve their root cause of homelessness which generally comes out to either unemployability, addictions or mental illness. This case also involves much, much less people that the homeless population. In essence, they're choosing to help a smaller problem where they could make a difference instead of a much larger issue that's intractable by those means.

ivan_gammel 10y ago

That's dumb argument, sorry. Disaster relief is temporary and help is provided to people who suffer from external circumstances. Housing for homeless is a daily job for the government and it is different, significantly bigger problem, for which the solution is not affordable for any single private organization or person. Private organizations have limited resources and they have the right to choose whom to support first. Moreover, here the main support comes not from Airbnb, but from the hosts who offer their houses for free. Airbnb contribution here is to provide a web service for hosts and people in the need and not to take money for that.

syshum 10y ago
Governments have, and should have, limited resources as well. Where do you think the government obtains its resources.. From private organizations and individuals. Thus if the problem is to large for Private Organizations and Individuals to handle collectively, then it is to hard for government as well Housing for Homeless is also a job the government continually fails at and is infact today primary provided for by private organizations using money donated by private organizations and individuals (at least in the US)
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  > Thus if the problem is to large for Private Organizations and Individuals to handle collectively, then it is to hard for government as well While that's a trivial tautology, in that the government is the mechanism by which a society acts collectively, it's utterly false in the way that you meant it. Government can coordinate resource deployment more effectively than a hodgepodge of private organizations. > Housing for Homeless is also a job the government continually fails at and is infact today primary provided for by private organizations using money donated by private organizations and individuals Fails at how? The (few) governments that are genuinely pursuing housing the homeless seem to be doing a fine job at it. The ones that are trying to get away with lip service to the idea are, well, getting away with it.
  - syshum 10y ago
    >>Government can coordinate resource deployment more effectively While it is possible for the government do accomplish this in theory, it fails more often than not. Taking in huge amounts of resources including money and wasting them with inefficient bureaucracy and corruption as you have proven with the rest of your comment
- ivan_gammel 10y ago
  It's indeed hard, but it's exactly one of the purposes the government exists for. It's their job which they have to do to justify their existence. You cannot blame any private for-profit organization for not taking the government's job and spending its money for something else.

beisner 10y ago

I don't think you're giving them enough credit here. I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning). Sure, it would be great if they had thought about this earlier or created a broader program. But you could say the same thing about the public - why only now do we, individual citizens, care enough to act and speak out? Sometimes it takes an action close to home to scare us out of inaction. Companies - even unicorns - are made of people, and those people are just as susceptible to social pressure and zeitgeist as the rest of us.

exolymph 10y ago
> I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning). Why not both?

PutinIsEvil 10y ago

PR Nobody cared about the 6 month ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011. This is all manufactured chaos.