Airbnb.org aims to reach 1 million free nights a year
Airbnb will fund the expansion by donating 10 cents from every booking and making up any shortfall, according to CEO Brian Chesky, who said the commitment will be completed regardless of business outcomes. Airbnb.org, an independent nonprofit whose operating costs are already covered by the company, uses company-donated credits to book stays on the platform for people experiencing crises and provides credits for other relief organizations to book stays as well.
The new funding model has resurfaced questions about whether a for-profit enterprise should use its philanthropy to offset less desirable business impacts. Leading artificial intelligence companies, currently sketching out plans to share some of their wealth, say yes. Chesky’s answer is emphatically no. “I don’t like this idea that somehow you create a nonprofit to make up for or apologize for your core business,” he told the Associated Press. “Our core business, independently, is gonna affect a lot more lives than this organization. And our core business needs to be responsible. And if we’re doing something that’s not responsible, we need to correct it.”
The pledge arrives at an uncertain time for corporate philanthropy overall. Most companies reduced their giving over the past five years, according to a recent survey by Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose, and tax law changes have prompted businesses to reconsider their charitable strategies.
Some affordable housing advocates have criticized Airbnb for worsening the supply of lower-cost residential housing, and critics say the affordable housing crisis means less housing is available for people displaced by disasters. Many governments, including Spain and New York City, have recently moved to curb short-term rentals. Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając, a postdoctoral fellow at Copenhagen Business School who researches the societal impacts of digital platforms, cautioned the humanitarian sector against growing too dependent on commercial platforms, saying the company could use its growing philanthropic footprint to further ingrain its product into communities and legitimize the presence of short-term rentals as its model is contested.
Chesky denied that Airbnb is “the contributor of the reason cities are expensive” but acknowledged that some hosts take a small fraction of their area’s housing off the market. Murray Cox, founder of the data activist project Inside Airbnb, pointed to a “crisis” missing from the nonprofit’s list of emergency housing interventions. “There’s also the housing crisis that’s occurring around the world,” Cox said. “And, although they’re not causing the housing crisis, they’re contributing to it by taking millions of housing units — residential houses — off the housing market.”
Airbnb.org was launched formally in 2020 as the San Francisco-based company went public. Since then, the nonprofit reports having provided 1.6 million nights of free, temporary housing in nearly 140 countries; hosts are compensated and fees are dropped. Beneficiaries include people recovering from natural disasters, families traveling for medical care and survivors escaping domestic violence. When Washington state wildfires forced tens of thousands of evacuations in August, the nonprofit said it provided more than 1,400 nights of free housing in the disaster’s early days.
Christoph Gorder, executive director of Airbnb.org, compared the nonprofit to “the ambulance that’ll get you to the hospital.” Short-term housing is a “great product-market fit,” he said, because the organization is able to “house a lot of people very quickly with an enormous amount of flexibility to meet their particular needs.” Gorder said the new funding mechanism will provide a “lot more money” that the nonprofit can depend on each year. “It’s not just shuffling the deck chairs around,” he said.
The $500 million five-year injection would more than double the total contributions Airbnb.org reported between 2021 and 2025. At 10 cents per booking, the company would have to register 5 billion bookings over the next five years to reach the figure through the per-booking donation alone. “We felt like this is a responsible number where it’s sufficiently big to make a difference in the world,” Chesky said. “But it’s also a number shareholders can be comfortable with.”
Noah Patton, director of disaster recovery at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said short-term assistance from nonprofits such as Airbnb.org and government entities such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency is “key for preventing that initial displacement.” He noted that an Associated Press analysis found President Donald Trump takes longer to approve disaster aid and denies a greater percentage of requests than his predecessors. But Patton said more lasting solutions are needed so “folks have homes to return back to.” “It’s a Band-Aid if you don’t also focus on the long-term aspect of this,” he said.
Airbnb.org also plans to expand its medical stays program to 20 countries by the end of the year. The program partners with medical relief organizations to house families traveling for treatment. Gorder said Airbnbs allow families to bring additional relatives and pets that some alternatives don’t allow, and amenities such as kitchens give families the option to cook patients’ favorite foods. “And then they just have a quiet place at the end of the day,” he said. “So, it’s a lot more than four walls and a roof.”
In Mexico, where the program was piloted last fall, Airbnb.org says it has housed medical travelers for nearly 1,500 nights. Its first partner, Vuela Fundación, supports children diagnosed with cancer; many of the Mexico City-based organization’s clients travel from poor rural towns and lack access to the country’s social security system. Diego Parada Herrera, the co-founder and CEO, said it’s not uncommon to see families camping in tents or sleeping in parked cars outside of hospitals because they couldn’t afford to stay anywhere else. “The need was there. And we were conscious of it,” he said. “But we didn’t know how to address it.”
Parada Herrera said Airbnb.org now provides his organization with credits that case managers use to complete bookings for families in need. Some hosts offer discounted rates, he said, and Vuela Fundación stocks fridges with ready-to-cook food packages. His nonprofit created instructional videos for families who are unfamiliar with Airbnb’s business model and struggle to grasp that they will be staying in someone else’s home. Chesky said the company will likely “keep going” based on how this expansion goes. “Whatever people think of us, we’re doing this for decades,” he said. “It’s up to them to judge us and our motivations. And it’s up to us to have a commitment that’s a decade-long commitment.”