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Airbnb Hosts More Likely To Reject Guests With Disabilities, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
A study by Rutgers University has found that travelers with disabilities using the travel hosting service Airbnb are more likely to be rejected and less likely to be pre-approved. From a report: A Rutgers University study of nearly 4,000 requests for lodging on the home-sharing platform found that guests with blindness, cerebral palsy, dwarfism and spinal cord injury were refused at rates higher than people without disabilities. In some instances, hosts who claimed that their homes were accessible were also more likely to approve guests without disabilities, according to the research published Friday. The report raises new questions about the ethics of Airbnb's business model, following the #AirbnbWhileBlack scandal that dogged the company last year, centered on revelations that African American guests were denied access at disproportionately high rates. While traditional hotels must abide by anti-discrimination laws, startups such as Airbnb have been able to skirt longstanding regulations by arguing that they are technology companies and platforms that aren't liable for the actions of their users.
Businesses should be allowed to turn away customers for any reason. Nobody should be able tomorrow you to do business with someone you don't want to serve. The Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America have the freedom of association and can turn away people they don't want in their organization. Businesses should have the same freedom of association to turn away customers they don't want.
When you have a system based on individual discretion without accountability you'll find all sorts of bias.
Libertarians might argue that we shouldn't do business with people who are treating others unfairly. But in the same breath don't think we should monitor and report on the toxic behavior of private individuals. Without exchange of information how could their utopia of a free market really work?
My advice is to be an affluent able-bodied white male (straight or passing). That avoid quite a few problems in life, and gives you a little bit of an edge in society.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There's a lot of fake news out there about the unemployment rate falling to 4.3%.
Most homes aren't handicap accessible. So I imagine hosts with houses with lots of stairs, etc. would have no choice but to turn away some handicapped people. Also, many people might fear that their home might even be dangerous for someone who's blind, deaf, etc. I used to live in a house that had a balcony with a low railing, for example. I sure wouldn't have wanted a blind person out there without someone to warn them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Looking closer at the article, it appears that it didn't. Here's one quote that stood out:
Some hosts told guests in wheelchairs that they could come only if they had someone who could carry them up stairs.
Well...yeah. The host probably wasn't trying to be an asshole there, he was just being honest about the fact that his house wasn't wheelchair accessible. Do the study's authors expect every Airbnb host to put in handicap ramps and lifts on their stairs before they rent their house? These are private residences, not hotels.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's not malice. Discriminating against our disabled countrymen is no one's goal... (okay it's probably someone's goal, but that sick fucker had a clumsy babysitter) perhaps it's just the increase in probability of a code violation that induces the bias.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'll play the devils advocate here:
These are private residences
And some are investment properties, rented out through Airbnb as sources of income. Should they be made to comply with ADA regs the same way all other small businesses are?
Have gnu, will travel.
Do the study's authors expect every Airbnb host to put in handicap ramps and lifts on their stairs before they rent their house?
Hotels have to do exactly that. It's part of being in the hospitality business.
But here's the real kicker: If Uber is any indication, if you rent out your house through AirBnB, and someone is injured, your homeowner's insurance won't cover it. And AirBnB's might not either, if it is determined that you rented it to someone who is disabled without making proper accommodations for their particular disability.
But if they consider not renting an upstairs bedroom to someone in a wheelchair when you have no wheelchair lift to be discrimination, then the entire study is nothing but propaganda. And that's an accomplishment: making an enterprise based on an illegal business model look like the victims.
A shocking new study from Rutgers shows that people are somewhat more likely to befriend or marry people of the same racial, regional, and socioeconomic background. "It's completely unacceptable to have this kind of discrimination in the 21st century," the highly paid academics said in a joint statement. "We urge Congress and the courts to end this now by creating an office of Equal Relationship Opportunity and imposing prohibitive fines for those whose friendships and significant romantic relationships do not meet today's standards of diversity. Individuals who are concerned about whether their existing friendships are diverse enough should discontinue those friendships and apply to the ERO for a government-approved, acceptably diverse list of friends."
Trying to have one body of law for people's work interactions and another for their private interactions may have worked in the 1960s but it won't work in the future.
Anti-discrimination laws have gotten out of hand; rather than rectifying injustices like those of the Jim Crow era pro-discrimination laws, they are now, like Jim Crow laws, expanding the unjust deprivation of individuals' freedom of association.
Regardless of your personal preferred theory of social behavior, the reality is the law dictates fair access in the market and for community life itself. Hotel or home operating as a business are the same under the law. Airbnb is at fault for allowing listings to the public without enforcement of legal requirements.
This. You're right about honesty. I have a place I rent-out on Airbnb that is on the fifth floor, and there is no elevator. I'm honest in my listing because I don't want some poor person to get stuck that can't climb up the five flights of stairs. My grandmother has used Airbnb several times so I like to think I'm helping people like her.
It would suck if I got punished for being honest.
I'll play the devils advocate here:
These are private residences
And some are investment properties, rented out through Airbnb as sources of income. Should they be made to comply with ADA regs the same way all other small businesses are?
No, they shouldn't. It sucks, but in most of the world if you're handicap you're lucky to be alive as most families put them out of their misery or they simply starve. They should be grateful they're able to get around at all in the modern world, let alone making everyone bend to their issues.
I think it's more the case that AirBnB hosts are more likely to cancel on people who are likely to be more work. Unfortunately that includes the disabled, foreigners and people who don't speak the host's preferred languages. I've been on the receiving end of this travelling in Europe, and it's a pain in the ass but is understandable on a personal level.
If I was renting out a room in my home to strangers, I'd only accept people if I had zero indication that they were going to cause me problems. I'd be picky, and possibly unfairly so. The issue is that a lot of these AirBnB "hosts" are actually slumlords or wannabe hoteliers who are doing it as a business rather than to rent out spare rooms, so there's a strong argument that they should be held to the standards of any other commercial entity (accessibility, taxes, zoning etc). I think having a clear distinction between the two groups is important, but as with everything else in the "sharing economy", the waters are intentionally clouded so that people can make money like a business whilst hiding behind the protections afforded a private citizen.
let alone making everyone bend to their issues.
But that's not how the law works. Anecdote:
They opened a new post office in my town. The parking lot immediately in front of the door is very narrow. A few diagonal spaces with a VERY narrow driving lane behind them. So they put a couple of handicapped spots at the corner of the building. Very wide, van accessible. Lots of room to back up, or drop a ramp at the rear of an accessible van. But some slob with a handicapped permit bitched because they were an extra 50 feet from the door. "Nope. My handicapped spot HAS to be the closest to the door." So they took them out and converted several diagonal spaces for handicapped use. You can't really park a long vehicle there. And you sure can't drop a ramp off the back of a van or unload a mobility scooter from a trunk. But now, fatso has the closest space. Never mind that, once inside the building, its a lot more than 50 feet to walk. So someone with serious cardiac or COPD problems would have to use a scooter anyway.
The problem with accessibility regs is that there aren't always good standards. You have to make an effort. But if someone doesn't think it's good enough for them, you get your ass sued off.
Another anecdote, similar to the one above:
A restaurant had a sidewalk/curb in front of their door. The curb rams were at the corner of the building, so that's where the handicapped spots went. Someone bitched "Not the closest spaces!" So the restaurant had the parking lot repainted to move general parking away from the front door. The handicapped spots stayed where they were (not going to jackhamer all that sidewalk out). Fatso still has to waddle exactly as many steps. But now at least, its the closest spot. So no lawsuits.
None of this shit makes any sense.
Have gnu, will travel.
It would suck if I got punished for being honest.
It also sucks that you run a business that isn't handicap accessible, in violation of the law.
I mean, seriously, you sound like you think you should be allowed to rent suites with no windows in violation of the fire code as long as you tell people up front... "No windows".
That doesn't fly. I can't open a knick nack shop that doesn't have a handicap accessible bathroom in it. If I get a space that isn't suitable I need to resolve all that stuff before I can get a permit, before i can legally let a customer in the door. Why should you be able to start a small hospitality business and do NOTHING?
Oh right... because you didn't bother getting a permit to run your little hospitality business. If this ever comes to bite you in the ass, its not because you got punished for being honest, its because you ran a hospitality business without meeting any standards, and got around being detected for a while at least, by futher failing to register and get licenses and permits. Probably failing to disclose the airbnb income properly on your taxes... because if every other part of your little hustle is illegal, why not that too?
Who could have known that spending a few decades suing people left, right and center would make the rest of the people hesitant to embrace your group?
See that "Preview" button?
"It would suck if I got punished for running a commercial operation out of my house that was inappropriate for the area and contrary to local regulations."
FTFY!!
WTF. I live in the Seattle area, and we're pretty damn progressive, but most apartment buildings even here don't have elevators. You are confused.
That isn't true at all. Apartments are required to have ADA accessible units. It doesn't require all units to be accessible. I know in my new complex, we have only about twenty out of over two hundred units that are wheelchair accessible since we don't have elevators.
Of that was true then how do you explain all of the new apartment buildings without elevators?
How about YOU read! To everyone else reading, he's playing the "technically correct" card and leaving out quite a bit of details that make his argument facetious. The link is about the Dixiecrats. The parties swapped and have swapped multiple times since the 1st Continental Congress. Lincoln was a Republican technically. Does anyone honestly think a Republican from today would free the slaves? I sure as hell don't.
When you set up laws that make doing business with the disabled a risky business, you decide not to do it.
No, but you can sell stuff on kijiji or some other ad site with "pick up only" as a restriction and not have that bathroom either. This is a closer example to Airbnb, so what's your point again?
> Most homes aren't handicap accessible. So I imagine hosts with houses with lots of stairs, etc. would have no choice but to turn away some handicapped people.
Shit man, it's almost as if all these unlicensed hotels arent in compliance with accessibility legislation. It's a cost of doing business. If you dont comply, you get fined.
If you rent it out, it is not a private residence.
I just want to make a few extra bucks, so I rent out a tv hospital set and perform surgery on the side. Why should I have to get licensed to perform surgery or act as a hospital?
Let the buyer beware, free market, blah blah blah.
That's right, mom and pop services replacing corporate, boring, but standard and guaranteed level of service such as taxis and hotels.
We all learned already about the ugly side of guerilla taxi and we keep learning about the same ugly side of guerrilla hotels.
I wonder if this could be fixed by disassociating the platform from hosts.
Abnb is not a hotel, it's just a software used by many shady private dwellings to score some side cash on tourists.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I guess the point is that a hotel, a commercial operation, would be required by law to be accessible. Airbnb thinks it and the people who let through it should be exempt.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
People lend their appartments, people decide to whom. People may be biased or racist. People are nevertheless allowed to decide whom to lend their appartments and other stuff.
So what?
And why is it a problem of AIRBNB's business model?
Looking closer at the article, it appears that it didn't. Here's one quote that stood out:
Some hosts told guests in wheelchairs that they could come only if they had someone who could carry them up stairs.
Well...yeah. The host probably wasn't trying to be an asshole there, he was just being honest about the fact that his house wasn't wheelchair accessible. Do the study's authors expect every Airbnb host to put in handicap ramps and lifts on their stairs before they rent their house? These are private residences, not hotels.
I agree, but... from the article:
The study further found that hosts who advertised wheelchair accessible homes approved 80% of guests without a disability, but only 60% of travelers with spinal cord injuries, raising further questions about the potential biases of Airbnb users.
It's one thing to say your place isn't wheelchair accessible. It's another to say it is, and then turn away people with wheelchairs.
I think you need to explain how it's propaganda, unless you're actually arguing it's a good thing that some AirBNB hosts are both unable to cater to guests with disabilities. It seems a massive leap to look at a study that says a certain type of business has a major problem with catering to certain types of client, determining the reason why they don't, and then claiming that it's "propaganda" when, in fact, you've just re-enforced the thesis of the study (by providing an explanation) rather than debunked it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It depends on what the "business model" is. Both for the person using AirBNB to "share" their accommodation and AirBNB.
In the case of the renter
1. If they are occasionally sharing their place then I lean towards they can choose, its not an ongoing business, it an intermittent way to make a bit of money on the side. Much like getting a few bucks or a beer for mowing your neighbour's lawn.
2. If instead they are constantly renting out their "spare" apartment(s) then they are operating a commercial enterprise and should obey the requisite rules.
In the case of AirBNB
If the predominance of their renters are predominantly case 1. then AirBNB is just facilitating the sharing of goods and services among noncommercial entities.
If it is case 2 then they are a commercial booking agent and need to follow those rules.
I would also argue they should follow the commercial rules for all their commercial renters.
Let's just stop being the devil and admit that ADA and all other similar regulations are impediment to individual rights. We are all born with the right to discriminate, then we discriminate in our daily lives and nobody bothers us. But god forbid should we decide to start a business and help some people we actually *can* help the government prevents us unless we take it upon ourselves not to discriminate against everybody else.
This is complete nonsense, a person has the right to discriminate (if not, then you should be sued by every business that you discriminated against, by every person you didn't offer a date, by every landlord whose residence you skipped, etc.)
MY OTHER COMMENTS
AirBNB is just like Uber ... they do not want to do anything but having some website/app and getting money for provisions. So i guess they do not care at all who has which skin color.
That's their business, go to a different doctor.
If you are bleeding out, and you are of an ethnicity that no nearby doctor is willing to treat, this means you would die. Do you accept death?
So, "affluent". How do I go about being that?
Paraphrasing Dave Ramsey:
Don't borrow money for your first car. Walk until you can afford a bicycle, and use that until you can afford to buy a beater car with cash. (I recommend a bicycle over public transit because entry-level jobs often require taking weekend hours when city buses are not in operation.)
Don't borrow money for your post-secondary tuition. Work in professions that do not require a degree until you have saved enough money to buy an associate's degree from a community college with cash. Then work in professions that require only an associate's degree until you have saved enough money to buy a bachelor's or higher degree from a state college with cash.
Don't borrow money for your first business. Work as a W-2 employee (or foreign counterpart) until you have saved enough money to start your own business.
most apartment buildings even here don't have elevators.
As I understand it, if you are leasing to the public, you have to either A. have an elevator or B. lease the first floor. Based on what you said, it appears most apartment buildings have chosen option B.
A classified ad offering goods for pickup would appear to satisfy accessibility regulations if the buyer can arrange to meet the seller outside the seller's door at a particular time. This outdoor workaround doesn't apply so well to an Airbnb listing.
The issue is that a lot of these AirBnB "hosts" are actually slumlords or wannabe hoteliers who are doing it as a business rather than to rent out spare rooms
Then change the law to phase in accessibility requirements for a property owner at a particular number of unit-days per year.
When the barber declines to give me a haircut based on my eye color he has done me no favor but he has done me no wrong. That's true even if I live in a place where he's the only barber within a thousand miles. My desire to have "an opportunity for a good haircut" does not give me a right to force him to cut my hair or to force him out of business.
Ideally, if you're going for a consistent light-touch minarchist legal code, there'd also be no law against "practicing barbering without a license" and therefore no "only barber within a thousand miles".
Unless some other factor changes valuations, economic discrimination is an unstable situation - the demand curve your business sees is higher if you are open to all customers, so businesses have an incentive not to discriminate, and if they ignore those incentives, they'll likely face competitors that don't.
Say for every 100 people in a particular market, 20 are of an ethnic minority, 60 bigots of the ethnic majority who refuse to eat in the same room as a minority, and 20 neutral people of the ethnic majority. A restaurant admitting no minorities could sell meals to 80 people, the bigots and the neutrals, while a non-racist restaurant could sell meals to only 40 people, the minorities and the neutrals. Without regulation protecting minorities from a majority of bigots, whom would a rational restaurateur admit?
If you'd bothered to read the summary, you might have noticed it says "In some instances, hosts who claimed that their homes were accessible were also more likely to approve guests without disabilities"
Accessibility issues are not the problem.
The "mighty businessman" is an individual deciding what to do with his or her own time and labor. I have absolutely no right to force the barber to cut my hair contrary to his will. I have no right to have him jailed for declining to cut my hair. It's not that he's "more important," it's that it's his time and his effort. It doesn't matter whether any other barber feels differently. It doesn't matter if he's the only barber on the continent. I don't have any right to demand his services any more than I have a right to enslave him.
One significant difference is that laws requiring having short hair are not nearly as widespread as sit-lie laws requiring having housing.
Lots of people are exempt from ADA requirements. Pretty much anyone renting or subletting a house or apartment in the U.S. is already exempt from these requirements and has been since the ADA was passed. Only a relatively small minority of apartments (usually a limited number of units in large complexes) in this country are handicap accessible, along with a very small percentage of houses (usually made so at the expense of the owner).
It was understood from the beginning that the ADA was meant for public accommodations and businesses doing new construction, NOT for private residences (it would have never passed otherwise). The fact that someone is temporarily renting out their private residence via Airbnb doesn't change the fact that these are still private residences.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I don't think it's fair to call someone who occasionally rents out their house an "unlicensed hotel." I gather that existing "bread and breakfast" operations with 5 rooms or less are already exempt from the ADA. And those are certainly more akin to hotels than some guy renting out a spare bedroom or his house for the weekend.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow, I didn't realize that the ADA was that weak. In Europe anyone renting (we generally don't do subletting) has to make sure that the property is both safe (escape routes for fire, electrical standards etc.) and accessible.
There are a few exemptions but not many. The basic principal is that if you do any type of business beyond the level of car boot sale you probably need to ensure everyone can access it, with a few exemptions where it really isn't practical.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why should a hotel be required to put in wheelchair ramps any more than a house that's being rented out to customers? One law for everyone.
Of course the study authors do not expect all residences to be made safe for all disabilities. They just don't care. They want to drop the discrimination bomb without any consideration for practicality, motivation, or any other thing at all. It's accuse of discrimination then lambast for bigotry. Period. End of story.
The hotel industry backers prefer it that way.
Ralph Nader got students to volunteer in order to conduct studies on one company in an industry. After their findings were released he would then solicit contributions to his non-profit from other companies in that industry.
It's an old game.
I am an airbnb superhost and a DISability rights activist. Like many hosts with DISabilities, airbnb provides me with income and work via home sharing where obtaining work in the mainstream workforce has been extremely difficult, dangerous and inaccessible. There are access issues in their platform that do need to be addressed, but the methodology in this study is extremely faulty, leading to inaccuracies.
Also, since initiating the anti-discrimination policy, the platform has increased the use of instant booking, so guests with DISabilities could all book vacations without the inquiry, unless they were inquiring on issues of accessibility, in which case a host would responsibly answer the guest's questions with or without immediate approval, especially if engaged in the inquiry initiated by the guest.
Guests who find themselves discriminated against should report those experiences to airbnb, and the company should remove discriminating hosts from their platform.
The big issue has to do with building codes that allow for construction of homes that are not accessible and lack of programs to make housing more accessible. Airbnb listings can only be as accessible as housing is, in general.
And further; a classified ad for a single one-off sale of used goods isn't a 'business enterprise' in remotely the same way that operating an unused suite/apartment as a 'hotel' would be.
Just as I can sell a used car via the classifieds without a lot of 'red tape'. But if I start buying and selling cars and operating a used car dealership off my driveway and out of my garage... then its a whole other thing.
AirBnB is largely people pretending to be the former, while actually being the latter.