Airbnb Partners With Cities For Disaster Preparedness

An anonymous reader writes: Every time a city- or state-wide disaster strikes, services to help the victims slowly crop up over the following days and weeks. Sometimes they work well, sometimes they don't. Today, city officials in San Francisco and Portland announced a partnership with peer-to-peer lodging service Airbnb to work out some disaster-preparedness plans ahead of time. Airbnb will locate hosts in these cities who will commit to providing a place to stay for people who are displaced in a disaster, and then set up alerts and notifications to help people find these hosts during a crisis. The idea is that if wildfires or an earthquake forces thousands of people to evacuate their homes, they can easily be absorbed into an organized, distributed group of willing hosts, rather than being shunted to one area and forced to live in a school gymnasium or something similar.

Comments

O RLY?

[BlueStrat]

Today, city officials in San Francisco and Portland announced a partnership with peer-to-peer lodging service Airbnb to work out some disaster-preparedness plans ahead of time.

As opposed to trying to shut them down, along with the various ride-sharing services, as we've seen them try in recent times? Ride-sharing could work the same way in transporting disaster victims/refugees.

I wonder what other services the government might want to shut down that could be helpful in a disaster ::cough::quadcopter drones::cough::?

Good to see at least some in government aren't totally blinded by monied interests intent on stifling the advance of technology to preserve obsolete businesses and business models.

Strat

Re: O RLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is good that people can leave their homes at a moments notice to rent them to disaster victims.

In this week new a quadrocopter was flying over a forest fire to take pictures. The fire fighting plages an helicopters needed to be warned about it. Take care of that cough.

Re: O RLY?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? It's like you understand nothing.

They don't leave their homes to rent them to someone else. That is why it's called Airbnb - it's a bed and breakfast. They rent a room in the house.

Wow, somewhere in the world someone was careless with a quad. Stop the presses, we must ban these eviiil things before it corrupts our precious fluids.

Re:O RLY?

[DRJlaw]

I wonder what other services the government might want to shut down that could be helpful in a disaster ::cough::quadcopter drones::cough::?

Or me, with my handy-dandy M60 machine gun, ready to volunteer to keep law and order and suppress the roaming post-apocalyptic mobs!!

The mere fact that you can think of a use for a resource in an emergency does not mean that you throw-out all non-emergency regulations.

My house would be useful for housing refugees. That doesn't mean that you want me running it as a 24/7 alternative to the Quality Inn. Especially when I'm in the middle of your residential neighborhood.

don't bother helping the niggers

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they don't need yo help, honky!

Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[popo]

Since the first, second and fourth amendments have already been assaulted and cut-back in the USA, it's probably just a matter of time before the third amendment gets assaulted too.

Most of our already-lost rights seem to have been erased under the banner of "emergency planning", so this would seem like a logical place for the breach on our third amendment rights.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[91degrees]

Well, this is not about quartering soldiers, nor is it without the consent of the owner.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, that's what THEY want you to think!

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Offer a huge tax deduction to anyone who consents to quartering the troops, third amendment problem solved.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Ixokai]

The fiction that our second amendment rights are "under assault" is a kind of strange delusion bordering on mass hysteria that has no relationship to reality. Across the country gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[BlueStrat]

The fiction that our second amendment rights are "under assault" is a kind of strange delusion bordering on mass hysteria that has no relationship to reality. Across the country gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

Michael Bloomberg, is that you?

Strat

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much. Just circumvent everything with large tax deductions. Then we can throw out the old "it's a just reward, there's no punishment of anyone else" line when people complain about $1k deductions for not owning firearms.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is else is crazy, just not you.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably don't want to debate the societal economics of gun ownership; there are genuine economic costs to allowing private gun ownership, and very few benefits (i.e. most people don't make money with their guns). There may be non-economic reasons we want to allow private gun ownership, but if you're gonna squabble about economic equivalency you're gonna lose.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[peragrin]

Some of the gun regulations they have proposed though have been far from sensible. In many cases a squirt gun(you know that shoots water at less pressure than your sink) could be built to fail them requiring regulation for it.

Assault weapon bans are bans on things that look like Assault rifles but aren't. As for who gets guns we have tons of laws already but it is such a mishmash that it can be bypassed. Sort of like how the companies can bypass the IRS taxes by shuffling money around.

Re: Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is most of America.
The part that doesn't shot people banging on their door a 4:00 AM.

Because that is how killers attack.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[drinkypoo]

Across the country gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

Across the country, attempts at eliminating gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

Re: Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

The squirt gun ban are not second ammedment issue. They are the knee jerk reaction that happens eveytime some dumb teenager points an airsoft replica gun at a cop and gets shot.

Pointing to dumb ideas as an exuce to do nothing is class A rationalionization.

Well if they can put a man on the moon...

If there is a gray area between assaults and other weapons that would be manufactured looking for loophole. Not a government problem.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Wycliffe]

The fiction that our second amendment rights are "under assault" is a kind of strange delusion bordering on mass hysteria that has no relationship to reality. Across the country gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

That's your perspective. You openly admitted that they are "attempting" to regulate guns though. The "pro-gun" people on the other end see any attempts to regulate as a form of attack. The more regulations there are on guns then the less useful the second amendment is. The second amendment is not there so people can kill a squirrel. The second amendment is there so people can defend themself if the government starts violating all their other rights. Honestly, I don't know how useful it is anymore though. From tanks to missiles to drones, there are plenty of weapons that are reserved exclusively for government use. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good idea to allow the average person to own a tank just that the people who wrote the second admendment and the philosophy behind it is a little outdated at this point. When the 2nd amendment was written the founding fathers were highly against a standing army and no massive weapons even existed so an armed populous was on a much more level playing field with an oppressive government. Mandatory 2 year conscription where everyone is trained with the high tech weapons even if they don't have immediate access to them might be one way to help level the playing field. It's somewhat strange to ask "how can the government give it's citizens the ability to overthrow the government if needed?" but that's really what needs to be asked if you want to restore the essence of the 2nd amendment.

Re: Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloomberg is just making sure things are safe for Americans. Someone shot up a Jewish community center, $50,000,00.00 handed to gun control activism the next day is going to make sure this will not repeat.

Gun control does work. Venezuela's gun violence is 1/1000 of what it was before all non military and police were forbidden to own them. North Korea has had 3 shootings in such a populated country in the past year total.

So, the fewer guns, the safer the streets. Criminals will just be caught anyway, so the focus should be on the nut cases here in the US.

What part of "a well regulated militia" do people not understand?

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Lumpy]

for now.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[Lumpy]

Same as the delusion that strict anti- gun laws make a difference... See Chicago for an example of this as a failure.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[halltk1983]

I would consider the reduction of loss of property to be a economic benefit. It's the same reason stores hire loss prevention officers and put beepers at the door.

Re:Third Amendment Violations, dead ahead

[91degrees]

Armies are quite capable of supporting themselves these days. They don't need to requisition houses, especially not those in the US, where they have huge military basis.

Many questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't there instances of illegal subletting in some instances? (Anyone who has ever leased, ever read your leasing agreement? You know, the part that might say any guests exceeding 3 days in a month are illegal occupants?) Now we're talking about something more than just a few days... perhaps weeks. Then there's the issue of families, more than just one or two people staying. There's also the safety aspect on both sides. How do you vet the disaster victim and the subletter? It's not like having the weight of a hotel behind you incase something goes wrong with a tenant.

Given the intent, it seems like a good idea. I hope it can be worked out.

Re:Many questions

[profplump]

Yes, landlords can restrict subleases. Though cities could probably override such contract requirements, and landlords could make exceptions. Plus that only applies to renters in the first place; AirBnB includes a lot of owner-occupied and investment properties.

In terms of safety, have some faith. Yes, it's possible that someone will wait for a natural disaster, sign up for emergency housing, head to a randomly selected AirBnB property, and commit a crime. But that's a fairly elaborate plan with lots of moving parts the planner cannot even influence; if their intent was to harm whatever non-specific household they were assigned they could do it without so much hassle. But more importantly, the vast majority of people won't seek to harm their hosts, and we should not choose to let them suffer just on the off chance that Bond villain is waiting to take advantage of the situation. You have a much, much, much greater risk of dying in an motor vehicle accident, but you probably never think twice about getting on the road; don't overestimate the risk here.

It's also not clear that this situation would require weeks of housing. In many evacuations people only couple of days of housing, and even if their particular residence is unavailable for weeks a city as a whole can generally organize longer-term housing for the small number of people who need it, once the short-term need recedes.

In terms of families, if you're worried about natural disasters you should first be appalled at homeless shelters. In most cities there are no shelters that will take entire families on an emergency basis -- they'll take women and children, or men, but not men and women (and sometimes not even men and children). Frequently males must continue to live on the street while the rest of their family is in a shelter until they can get enrolled as a family in a longer-term solution (thankfully many longer-term providers make a provision for entire families, though there are a more than a few women-and-children-only long-term shelters as well); I'm sure they'd rather the rest of their family get shelter than not, but the gender discrimination hurts everyone, including the women and children in the shelter. That happens every night; if you're okay with that you can probably get over the possibility of breaking up a family for a couple of days after a disaster.

Re:Many questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live, there are also bed taxes. One person in a flat down from me has different people inhabiting it virtually every night, and usually 5-8 cars because it usually gets used as a flophouse during a popular weekend.

So, when the AirBnB homeowners start paying their fair of taxes and comply with their homeowner agreements or even lease agreements, the program may be more accepted.

Don't forget health inspections and fire codes. I'm sure few AirBnB places are up to those (things like fire sprinklers in all rooms, for example.)

Re:Many questions

[Anonymous Coward]

Override the contracts? Seems like a violation of landlord property rights. If a lease says no guests over 3 days per month, then 4 days per month is a violation, disaster or not. The landlord's resources are being used up by excessive people living there, especially if the landlord has to pay for sewer, water, or certain other utilities. Let alone the nuisance it may cause other tenants--tenants who may be renting there because of the contract provisions. It'd be like renting a nice apartment that doesn't allow smoking, then the landlord looking the other way. In other words, it devalues what one is paying for.

A family is taken in during disaster and trashes the place. Or maybe not trash it, but rather leaves a mess behind. Or perhaps accidentally breaks some things. Unlike the normal Airbnb procedures, which I assume would use a credit card, I assume this emergency situation won't be paid for by the people staying there. There is no vetting without a credit card by the displaced individuals. Maybe vetting isn't the right word. A credit card helps ensure the person-renting-out gets what is coming to him or her in terms of fixing damage.

The lack of caring about the homeless in this country is appalling. It's a total joke. A negative income tax could help things a bit, however it's done. But it's pathetic we don't care enough about the homeless.

Decentralizing FEMA one step at a time

[Jesrad]

This is awesome on many levels for anyone with a keen understanding of transaction costs, and the effect of the internet on these costs.

Will they partner with Uber and set up special-case emergency pickup and relocation of disaster victims too ? It would be amazing I could take a complementary insurance to cover for that.

Re:Decentralizing FEMA one step at a time

[Anonymous Coward]

In an actual disaster, the cell phones will be down and the Uber drivers themselves will be fleeing the area. When one is working for sub minimum wage after expenses and putting their personal vehicles at risk to damage while working in a disaster area, there will be nowhere near the number of drivers needed. In the case of Katrina, would the uber drivers have boats too?

Airbnb isn't even close to replacing the mainstay of emergency shelter.... Public buildings, typically public schools used by the red cross for relief efforts. Airbnb will not be able to take in the many thousands of people displaced.

Not many Airbnb hosts would have been willing to take Katrina victims for free. Remember, they joined airbnb to make a quick buck, not to have dirty disaster victims for days, weeks, or months on end for free or at discounted rates..

Re:Decentralizing FEMA one step at a time

[profplump]

Who told you they'd be doing this for months? We're talking about an alternative to emergency housing like the Superdome -- which was occupied for only 6 days during Katrina. Even if you added the Reliant Dome occupancy it's still only 18 days until the domes were clear and the vast majority of people were in permanent housing.

Re:Decentralizing FEMA one step at a time

[Wycliffe]

Remember, they joined airbnb to make a quick buck, not to have dirty disaster victims for days, weeks, or months on end for free or at discounted rates..

I don't think this is targetted at the typical "airbnb" provider. I think the idea is that airbnb already has all the infrustructure in
place so in the event of a disaster they can run ads on the radio that say something like:

"If you have a spare room and are willing to take a displaced family then please go to airbnb.com/disaster and register your room".

Airbnb already has the ability to register arbitrary rooms in an organized manner which is something that redcross, etc.
doesn't have. It would be very possible that a majority of the "free rooms" would be provided by people who are not normal
airbnb providers but just concerned people trying to help that wouldn't typically rent out their spare room.

As a side note, this would greatly increase airbnb's exposure and would most likely cause a huge influx of people and some of
these people will probably stick around and sell their rooms later so it's very advantageous for airbnb to participate in something like this.

Why the government is in the red

[Anonymous Coward]

The US government is already severely in the red because it wastes money outsourcing anything it can to private industry, while not charging industry sustainable amounts for the welfare it gives out.

In this case, we already have a genuinely decentralized amateur radio network comprising several hundred thousand volunteers, of which thousands are trained in peer to peer emergency response.

Or AirBNB could adopt Uber's pricing model

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural disaster in the area? Due to surge pricing the cost of a room is now $2,000 dollars per night!

A critical need in disasters is housing

[rlh100]

This is a great idea. Getting people to think about opening their homes in times of a disaster before the disaster happens. Sort of like the organ donation sticker on your drivers license.

Having a database of people who are willing to open their homes in a disaster and what their parameters for guests are would be invaluable. I am a single older man so I would be willing to have other single older men stay with me as well as a family or a couple. What Airbnb is proposing is using their tools to help disaster relief agencies create a database of places for people to stay. Probably of limited use the night of the disaster, but useful for the next two weeks.

This is an interesting step forward for disaster relief agencies learning how to use social media. Airbnb is willing to help this happen. While it is good PR for Airbnb, it is also a great way for them to give back to the community.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[profplump]

Demographic restrictions are doom for a plan like this. There's a reason we don't allow housing discrimination and I don't see why we'd want to suspend those rules in an emergency; if anything they seem more important when people are in desperate need.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[drinkypoo]

This is a great idea. Getting people to think about opening their homes in times of a disaster before the disaster happens. Sort of like the organ donation sticker on your drivers license.

I don't have an organ donation sticker because there have been paramedics who have outright announced that they don't work as hard to save donors. I will continue to not donate until this is no longer true. If I were to join an organ donation scheme it would involve reciprocity. I might well, although I forget the name of the one I liked the look of, and of course the google results are all scientific papers. They must not have paid google for ad placement, so it's not coming up at all.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Anonymous Coward]

...there have been paramedics who have outright announced that they don't work as hard to save donors.

Source? I'm genuinely curious as I've never once met a paramedic (I know several), doctor or emergency worker that feels this way.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is one example.

Presuming that this isn't happening is like presuming we never bury anyone alive, even though things like this happen.

The question is not whether these things are happening, but how prevalent they are.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Wycliffe]

there have been paramedics who have outright announced that they don't work as hard to save donors.

#1) I doubt in many cases a paramedic even knows.
#2) Why would this be the case? An organ donor needs to be on life support to be useful in most cases.
#3) Keeping you on life support longer for being a organ donor seems to make it more likely that you might survive not less.

This is plain old FUD. Name one good reason that a doctor, paramedic, etc.. would try to hasten the death of an organ donor
or not work as hard to save someone who is an organ donor. The only logically reason I can think of is bribes but this would
be both highly unethical and illegal and is an accusation that warrants some proof that it's actually happening.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Wycliffe]

This is a case of poor bedside manner. Nothing more. The doctors were discussing the
possibility of organ donation in case the patient didn't pull through. They made the mistake
of having this discussion both too soon and in front of the patient but there doesn't appear
to be any discussion of hastening his death.
This would be the equivalent of discussing the possibility of "pulling the plug" regardless of
the status of organ donation. Organ donation happens AFTER someone is declared dead
and/or declared unlikely to survive. At this point, if someone is not an organ donor, they
are shipped off to the morge to be cremated and/or embalmed. At this point your chances
of survival are probably higher as an organ donor connected to life support than as a corpse
being carried away in hearse.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll see your unsupported postulate of "why" and raise you an anecdote of docs telling me they have witnessed other docs giving up on treatment earlier if they knew a patient was an organ donor, in order to harvest the organs.

I will even give you a "why": organs may not be as viable for transplant if the utmost effort is given to resuscitating the patient and harvest is delayed by these efforts.

But you go ahead and be an organ donor by default.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, who is going to know about homeowners making room available? I worry about someone's house being inundated with people demanding food (and some sticky fingered types who will make anything of value disappear.) If the homeowner runs out of food or space, then what? We saw in Katrina [1] what happened when people ran out of food to give. Their houses got burned down, with the occupants inside.

[1]: Katrina and Sandy were both interesting disasters, and made Americans realize that no matter how much volunteering and financial contributions they give to other places in the world, no other country but themselves will help the US in case of a disaster. Nobody.

This pretty much spawned the prepper movement.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a case of poor bedside manner. Nothing more.

This was more than poor bedside manner.

"I heard them tell my girlfriend and my relatives that there was no hope," [...]
"They looked at an x-ray of my brain, and when they had done that, they told my girlfriend that it wasn't good and that I wouldn't live," Mr Fritze said.

"I could hear her crying the whole time, but I couldn't do anything."

He drifted into unconsciousness, waking later to hear the doctors discussing his case.

"I heard them talking about donation, they wanted to do some tests on my liver and my kidney, so they could give them to some people," he said.

Obviously they weren't attempting to save this patient when they are already trying to put his organs up for match.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Wycliffe]

Obviously they weren't attempting to save this patient when they are already trying to put his organs up for match.

Yes, they obviously weren't attempting to save this patient but that doesn't mean that "organ donation" was the reason.
They thought him a goner and were beginning to discuss the "next step". If he wasn't an organ donor they probably
would have been discussing cremation, etc... Who's to say that they wouldn't have already removed life support and
moved him to end-of-life care if he wasn't an organ donor. Being on the organ donor list might have very well saved his
life as it probably delayed them pronouncing him dead and kept him in the actively monitored section of the hospital.

Re:A critical need in disasters is housing

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where you live, but around here doctors don't just go around terminating life support willy-nilly, of their own volition. I'm not following your presumption that he would have been disconnected from life support if the docs couldn't farm his organs out.

He obviously wasn't brain dead (the non-brain-dead EEG would be apparent even to a layperson, given he was conscious at the time), and yet they were still shopping his organs. That's seriously jumping the gun, in the most generous possible interpretation.

You can't exclude the possibility that the docs were not focused on saving this patient because they thought (even subconsciously) that they could do more good by piecing his vital organs out to other patients.

Rigorously proven? No. I have more than a reasonable doubt, though.

Any Help Is Good

[JimSadler]

I am glad that someone is thinking about disaster aid but the most neglected problem is the potential for a severe hurricane in highly crowded areas. South Florida can not be evacuated. We have at least 4 million people and very few highways as a way out. After a storm getting food and water and medical supplies into south Florida is not always possible. Imagine the storage required to feed this large population and the equipment it takes to get food out to the people. Trees cover the streets for days. All power and communications vanish. Safe water is not available nor will sewage systems tend to work. Injured people often have to wait days to be moved to an ER. Areas like Miami can easily be hit much harder than Katrina hit New Orleans. In my town we lost every grocery store nine years ago. those huge flat roofs on grocery stores collapse and the food gets wet and the perishables have no cooling as the power vanishes. We could easily have a million or more people in dire condition after a storm. So we do need several huge storage areas around our state as well as portable hospitals and all kinds of rescue vehicles and food delivery systems ready to go into action at a moments notice. The length of our state is such that we need these massive preparations running the length of the state so that no area is more than two hours away from the stockpiles. Lack of central planning and permitting random growth has created a very deadly trap which nature will spring one day.

Re:Any Help Is Good

[drinkypoo]

I am glad that someone is thinking about disaster aid but the most neglected problem is the potential for a severe hurricane in highly crowded areas. South Florida can not be evacuated.

If it's not safe in the event of a disaster, then it's not safe now. Therefore, we should be evacuating it now, at least down to a reasonable level of population. You know those maximum capacity numbers that get written inside of businesses? Florida should have one, too.

Re:Any Help Is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Noooo! Please don't send florida to the rest of us!!
There is a reason that state has its own fark tag :/

Re:Any Help Is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You know those maximum capacity numbers that get written inside of businesses? Florida should have one, too.

Given the number of lanes available for evacuation, and based on a simulation of the evacuation of coastal South Carolina I did in college, the maximum capacities are as follows:

* Miami area: 1.2 million
* Fort Meyers: 400 thousand
* Orlando: 1 million
* Tampa: 700 thousand

All of them are over capacity by a bit.

Here's an even better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Airbnb hosts, when you don't have paying guests why don't you take in homeless people? Homelessness is worse than a natural disaster for the individual because there's no solidarity from normal people. Society makes you feel like a criminal outcast. Most homeless people would be very grateful for a chance to sleep in a real bed and have a shower, even if it's only for a couple days.

you CAN choose your roommate at normal times

[raymorris]

> There's a reason we don't allow housing discrimination and I don't see why we'd want to suspend those rules in an emergency;

Actually you CAN choose who you want to live with. If GP feels comfortable living with an older man, that's his choice. Fair housing laws apply when you rent out an otherwise empty structure - when they are just getting a house from you, not living WITH you.

AirBnb vs local laws

[OzPeter]

I saw a story last week of an AirBnB "issue" Palm Springs Airbnb 'squatter' protected under law. In CA, if a person stays in your house for longer than 30 days they are recognized as a tenant. At which point all sorts of tenant protection laws kick in, and the only way to remove them is to start a lengthy legal process.

I'd say its nigh on impossible to circumvent laws like this in CA while still keeping your house as a private home. So I see jumping into AirBnB arrangements without understanding the legal framework of what you are doing as the equivalent of skipping through a minefield - regardless of the "good" intentions of this disaster preparedness scheme.

Re:AirBnb vs local laws

[Lumpy]

"the only way to remove them is to start a lengthy legal process."

You mean the only LEGAL way.. I have friends that will remove them within hours for only a case of beer and gas money.

This is brilliant

[John Jorsett]

I have to admire this strategy to wrap AirBnB in the banner of helping disaster victims. Besides being a valuable service for those victims and great PR for the company, it gives them a very effective argument to counter the rent-seeking behavior of the industry they're displacing and to attack enabling bureaucrats and politicians with ("Joe Smith wants to deny aid to disaster victims. Vote Mary Doaks for City Council.") I hope Uber is watching and learning from this.