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If you think this is some gotcha (you can't help with Afghan refugees during a crisis until you've solved homelessness?) then you never cared about the homeless

If you think this is some gotcha (you can't help with Afghan refugees during a crisis until you've solved homelessness?) then you never cared about the homeless in the first place, and are using them as a pawn when it's useful to dunk on the middle east.

newbie789 5y ago
Isn’t it kind of a gotcha to accuse someone of not caring about the homeless on the grounds that they… brought up homelessness? I did not see the word solved appear in the comment you’re responding to. I personally read it as a general comment about housing supply. Edit: To clarify, I’m happy about what AirBNB is doing here and support it fully. I think it’s possible to be concerned about housing from multiple angles at the same time though. I genuinely think it’s a stretch to assume that a person advocating for an additional large group of units literally translates to someone that wants more people on the street. Furthermore I find that reason to be far more convoluted than what would constitute an easy “gotcha.” “You said you want to help a problem and therefore you don’t want that problem helped. My proof is that you brought up the problem in the first place.” is something I have difficulty digesting.
gruez 5y ago
>then you never cared about the homeless in the first place That's a bit presumptuous, don't you think? There's nothing inherently contradictory about "we need to look after americans before look after refugees" and "we need to do something about homelessness". The only contradiction is that the former is a policy of one political party, and the latter is a policy of the other political party.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  > and the latter is a policy of the other political party. Can you give an example? I'm honestly stumped trying to think of one concrete policy initiative put forward on this topic.
  - gruez 5y ago
    random result: >As part of President Joe Biden's new infrastructure plan, he unveiled nearly $5 billion in new grants to state and local governments for rental assistance and the development of affordable housing. In doing so, he aims to get 130,000 homeless people into homes. https://www.newsweek.com/once-homeless-now-im-multi-millionaire-bidens-homelessness-plan-will-fail-opinion-1606504 https://www.newsweek.com/once-homeless-now-im-multi-milliona...
    - DetroitThrow 5y ago
      Surprised this is downvoted when it was exactly what the OP was asking for. Good job orange website.
jdavis703 5y ago
In a world of unlimited resources we should do both. However the refugees are in imminent danger of death (or at least goes conventional national security thinking), whereas most homeless Americans are at least able to scrape by.
- gruez 5y ago
  >However the refugees are in imminent danger of death (or at least goes conventional national security thinking), whereas most homeless Americans are at least able to scrape by. If we're using the utilitarian argument, shouldn't we be pouring money into effective altruism (eg. bill gates funding malaria prevention programs), which do a even better job at preventing death?
trompetenaccoun 5y ago
The covid crisis is affecting marginalized groups like the homeless or people with psychological problems among the hardest, because numbers of beds in clinics and shelters have been reduced, hospitals are busy and access is in cases restricted, everyone is dealing with ever-changing mandates, and many people simply have their own lives to worry about so no one cares for them. At the same time many hotels and airbnbs are under capacity because travel is restricted. It is a fair question why the homeless aren't hosted there. We don't have to expect Airbnb to pay for it but the government could if they actually cared about people, instead of terrorizing school kids and bankrupting the state with neverending lockdowns and restrictions.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  CA/OR/WA are buying motels to house homeless people.
kbos87 5y ago
I don’t think that’s fair. I drive past hundreds of homeless people who are already here in the US every day. I applaud Airbnb for this move, but I also can’t ignore the fact that it’s a moment in the news cycle that determines these people are getting help and these ones aren’t.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  Why does Airbnb offer free stays to refugees in Afghanistan, but not homeless in the US? First, Airbnb is very host-centered. The host can pick their guests, make changes to their reservations, etc. I think if they said “your house will host homeless, but don’t worry we will pay you anyway”, they’d lose 70% of US hosts regardless. The shelter is only part of the problem with homelessness, going hand in hand with at least mental health care. Second, it may have to do with prices. I imagine a night in Kabul cost $15–25 for an apartment (prior to the withdrawal, at which point they probably lowered further); now compare to prices in say Washington or SF area. Imagine Airbnb declares a plan for fighting homelessness, and has to pay actual market rates to its hosts in major US cities. All in all it looks like it could be an interesting idea for a non-profit, but it doesn’t seem to make sense as a long-term tactic for a business like Airbnb. This could be a good question to ask companies like Booking.com though, where hosts are generally not expected to be able to choose whether to accommodate the name on the booking.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    The CEO is quoted saying "The displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the US and elsewhere is one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time." These refugees aren't in Kabul any more; airbnb is probably paying market rates, or close to them, though perhaps not in DC or SF.
    - strogonoff 5y ago
      Ah. Much of my argument doesn’t apply then, except that still locations in the US with high homeless population are probably significantly more expensive (large cities) relative to where refugees are resettling, and that mental health care would have to accompany shelter more so with the homeless than with refugees.
unmole 5y ago
> dunk on the middle east. So, the Middle East includes Afghanistan now? I swear the borders seem to advance every year.
- MichaelGroves 5y ago
  The Middle East 'grew' in the early 00s, for the reasons you probably expect. The Bush administration needed a euphemism for Muslim nations. > The Greater Middle East, is a geo-political term, introduced in March 2004 in a paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the U.S. administration's preparatory work for the G8 summit of June 2004, denoting a vaguely defined region that includes the Arab world plus Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey.[1] The paper presented a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East and North Africa.[2][3] Previously, by Adam Garfinkle of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Greater Middle East had been defined as the MENA region together with Central Asia and the Caucasus.[4] > The future of this Greater Middle East has sometimes been referred to as the "new Middle East", first so by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who in Dubai in June 2006 presented the second-term Bush administration's vision for the region's future. Rice said would be achieved through 'constructive chaos', a phrase she repeated a few weeks later during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the 2006 Lebanon War had broken out; the meaning of this phrase and the Bush administration's vision have been much debated since.[5][6][7] The efforts to achieve this new Middle East are sometimes called "The Great Middle East Project".[8][9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East
  - Bayart 5y ago
    I had an argument the other day with a guy refering to Morocco as part of the Middle East. It seemed mind-boggling to me you'd put a country West of Portugal in that category. I then discovered it had become common parlance in the US for anything that spoke Arabic or Persian.

newbie789 5y ago

Isn’t it kind of a gotcha to accuse someone of not caring about the homeless on the grounds that they… brought up homelessness? I did not see the word solved appear in the comment you’re responding to. I personally read it as a general comment about housing supply. Edit: To clarify, I’m happy about what AirBNB is doing here and support it fully. I think it’s possible to be concerned about housing from multiple angles at the same time though. I genuinely think it’s a stretch to assume that a person advocating for an additional large group of units literally translates to someone that wants more people on the street. Furthermore I find that reason to be far more convoluted than what would constitute an easy “gotcha.” “You said you want to help a problem and therefore you don’t want that problem helped. My proof is that you brought up the problem in the first place.” is something I have difficulty digesting.

gruez 5y ago

>then you never cared about the homeless in the first place That's a bit presumptuous, don't you think? There's nothing inherently contradictory about "we need to look after americans before look after refugees" and "we need to do something about homelessness". The only contradiction is that the former is a policy of one political party, and the latter is a policy of the other political party.

shadowgovt 5y ago
> and the latter is a policy of the other political party. Can you give an example? I'm honestly stumped trying to think of one concrete policy initiative put forward on this topic.
- gruez 5y ago
  random result: >As part of President Joe Biden's new infrastructure plan, he unveiled nearly $5 billion in new grants to state and local governments for rental assistance and the development of affordable housing. In doing so, he aims to get 130,000 homeless people into homes. https://www.newsweek.com/once-homeless-now-im-multi-millionaire-bidens-homelessness-plan-will-fail-opinion-1606504 https://www.newsweek.com/once-homeless-now-im-multi-milliona...
  - DetroitThrow 5y ago
    Surprised this is downvoted when it was exactly what the OP was asking for. Good job orange website.

jdavis703 5y ago

In a world of unlimited resources we should do both. However the refugees are in imminent danger of death (or at least goes conventional national security thinking), whereas most homeless Americans are at least able to scrape by.

gruez 5y ago
>However the refugees are in imminent danger of death (or at least goes conventional national security thinking), whereas most homeless Americans are at least able to scrape by. If we're using the utilitarian argument, shouldn't we be pouring money into effective altruism (eg. bill gates funding malaria prevention programs), which do a even better job at preventing death?

trompetenaccoun 5y ago

The covid crisis is affecting marginalized groups like the homeless or people with psychological problems among the hardest, because numbers of beds in clinics and shelters have been reduced, hospitals are busy and access is in cases restricted, everyone is dealing with ever-changing mandates, and many people simply have their own lives to worry about so no one cares for them. At the same time many hotels and airbnbs are under capacity because travel is restricted. It is a fair question why the homeless aren't hosted there. We don't have to expect Airbnb to pay for it but the government could if they actually cared about people, instead of terrorizing school kids and bankrupting the state with neverending lockdowns and restrictions.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
CA/OR/WA are buying motels to house homeless people.

kbos87 5y ago

I don’t think that’s fair. I drive past hundreds of homeless people who are already here in the US every day. I applaud Airbnb for this move, but I also can’t ignore the fact that it’s a moment in the news cycle that determines these people are getting help and these ones aren’t.

strogonoff 5y ago
Why does Airbnb offer free stays to refugees in Afghanistan, but not homeless in the US? First, Airbnb is very host-centered. The host can pick their guests, make changes to their reservations, etc. I think if they said “your house will host homeless, but don’t worry we will pay you anyway”, they’d lose 70% of US hosts regardless. The shelter is only part of the problem with homelessness, going hand in hand with at least mental health care. Second, it may have to do with prices. I imagine a night in Kabul cost $15–25 for an apartment (prior to the withdrawal, at which point they probably lowered further); now compare to prices in say Washington or SF area. Imagine Airbnb declares a plan for fighting homelessness, and has to pay actual market rates to its hosts in major US cities. All in all it looks like it could be an interesting idea for a non-profit, but it doesn’t seem to make sense as a long-term tactic for a business like Airbnb. This could be a good question to ask companies like Booking.com though, where hosts are generally not expected to be able to choose whether to accommodate the name on the booking.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  The CEO is quoted saying "The displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the US and elsewhere is one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time." These refugees aren't in Kabul any more; airbnb is probably paying market rates, or close to them, though perhaps not in DC or SF.
  - strogonoff 5y ago
    Ah. Much of my argument doesn’t apply then, except that still locations in the US with high homeless population are probably significantly more expensive (large cities) relative to where refugees are resettling, and that mental health care would have to accompany shelter more so with the homeless than with refugees.

unmole 5y ago

> dunk on the middle east. So, the Middle East includes Afghanistan now? I swear the borders seem to advance every year.

MichaelGroves 5y ago
The Middle East 'grew' in the early 00s, for the reasons you probably expect. The Bush administration needed a euphemism for Muslim nations. > The Greater Middle East, is a geo-political term, introduced in March 2004 in a paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the U.S. administration's preparatory work for the G8 summit of June 2004, denoting a vaguely defined region that includes the Arab world plus Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey.[1] The paper presented a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East and North Africa.[2][3] Previously, by Adam Garfinkle of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Greater Middle East had been defined as the MENA region together with Central Asia and the Caucasus.[4] > The future of this Greater Middle East has sometimes been referred to as the "new Middle East", first so by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who in Dubai in June 2006 presented the second-term Bush administration's vision for the region's future. Rice said would be achieved through 'constructive chaos', a phrase she repeated a few weeks later during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the 2006 Lebanon War had broken out; the meaning of this phrase and the Bush administration's vision have been much debated since.[5][6][7] The efforts to achieve this new Middle East are sometimes called "The Great Middle East Project".[8][9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East
- Bayart 5y ago
  I had an argument the other day with a guy refering to Morocco as part of the Middle East. It seemed mind-boggling to me you'd put a country West of Portugal in that category. I then discovered it had become common parlance in the US for anything that spoke Arabic or Persian.