Airbnb Bans Host Who Dumped Guest Because She's Asian

I don&#x27;t endorse racism by any means, but there&#x27;s an overarching concept that a persons home is their castle, and you have broad discretion to control who and what goes on in your home. In most jurisdictions, you have a broad legal right as a person renting out your downstairs or a room to turn down tenants for any reason.<p>Airbnb wants to have it both ways. They demonstrate their contempt for the law by pushing accountability for illegal renting to their &quot;hosts&quot;, but where they have a messy situation where there is bad PR for them, all of the sudden they care about how &quot;hosts&quot; follow rules about discrimination that may or may not even apply to them.<p>This is yet another example of why AirBnb is a ridiculous business that shouldn&#x27;t operate as it does. Dealing with the issue in a way that would be compliant with the law would require that they acknowledge that many &quot;hosts&quot; are really running as hoc hotels, so they roll over the individual homeowners or tenants subletting their homes.

The piece seems rather &quot;tailored&quot; to deliver a message, and I suspect there is much more to the story than is being reported.<p>Perhaps the guest actually didn&#x27;t pre-arrange the extra friends, and then got pushy when the host wanted to charge for them.<p>I&#x27;m guessing the &quot;One word says it all. Asian&quot; comment was being used to stereotype the guest&#x27;s actions&#x2F;attitudes, rather than as a statement of &quot;You&#x27;re not welcome, because you&#x27;re Asian&quot;. Which in itself is of course deplorable, but not quite what is being reported.<p>The host posssibly deserve a ban just for the racist comment, and if things <i>are</i> as reported, they most certainly deserve the ban, but the reporting seems very &quot;framed&quot;.

Why is this not a crime under fair housing act? At best this is a loophole which will be closed via precedent. A quick google shows that it looks like some Airbnb hosts are already being taken to court over violating the fair housing act so it sounds like the loophole is already being closed.

But really, $50 a night on Big Bear, in mid February? That&#x27;s a steal!

Why is this post flagged ?

Good. Racists shouldn&#x27;t be given a platform to further their hate.

Huffington Post.

This situation is the biggest problem with Airbnb. Furthermore, these types of service should be double blind, and effectively anonymous for everyone but Airbnb (arguably them too, but that&#x27;s not really possible given payment information).<p>People are inherently racist [1], are forced to behave in ways to may (or may not) promote sexism(not necessarily in that they hate men&#x2F;women, but are forced to follow the norms) [2] etc. to varying extents. Anonymity is the solution. Why do you need to even know the name of the person who&#x27;s staying? You don&#x27;t.<p>[1] There&#x27;s plenty of research on this highlighted in this article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;28&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;nicholas-kristof-is-everyone-a-little-bit-racist.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;28&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;nicholas-kristof-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apa.org&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;journals&#x2F;releases&#x2F;cou-cou0000176.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apa.org&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;journals&#x2F;releases&#x2F;cou-cou0000176.pdf</a>