Airbnb Pulls 28 Hollywood Hills Listings and Ties Staff Bonuses to Safety

On 6 January 2020, Airbnb said it was removing 28 listings in the Hollywood Hills that the Los Angeles Police Department had identified as chronic party houses, the phrase used in the company's statement, and that every upcoming reservation at them had been canceled. Some of the listings came off the platform outright. The rest were suspended, and Airbnb said their owners would have to show they were in good standing with the city before it would consider putting them back.

The Los Angeles action opened a month in which the company put pay, money and a deadline behind guest safety. On 17 January it said employee bonuses would depend in part on progress on guest safety, and it set a goal of verifying 100 percent of its listings by 15 December 2020. On 21 January it said it had dedicated an additional $150 million in 2020 to new policies, protections and tools to protect hosts and guests.

What Airbnb did in Los Angeles

Airbnb said in a statement that the police had given it information about the houses, and that some of them had already generated citations and cease-and-desist orders. NBC Los Angeles reported that the police had identified the properties as creating a substantial neighborhood nuisance.

The 28 were not all treated the same way. According to the company's statement, as carried by FOX 11 Los Angeles, some listings were removed because of the severity of the problems the police had described. Others were suspended for what the company called a lengthy period, and their owners would have to send Airbnb documents certifying their good standing with the city before a return would be considered.

The properties were not named. CBS Los Angeles reported that, according to Airbnb, not every home on the list the police supplied was an Airbnb listing. None of the reports of 6 and 7 January read for this story carried a response from the owners.

Captain Steven Lurie of the police department's Hollywood Division said in a statement that the division appreciated Airbnb's cooperation, and he looked past one company: “We continue to work with all short-term rental platforms to allow them to provide their valuable service while maintaining the character of our neighborhoods.” John Choi, Airbnb's public policy manager in Los Angeles, said the listings did not reflect the great majority of the city's hosts, who he said shared their homes responsibly.

Why it happened

The removals followed a shooting. Five people died after a shooting at a Halloween party in 2019 at an Airbnb listing in Orinda, a suburb of San Francisco, FOX 11 reported. In November 2019, Airbnb said it would ban party houses. A Fox News report of 6 December 2019 said the company had by then set the ban out in new guidelines, barring open-invite parties and events and large parties in multi-family residences.

ShortTermRentalz, a trade publication, described the Hollywood Hills action on 7 January as the first de-listing since the decision to ban party houses.

Bonuses, a deadline and $150 million

The 17 January post on Airbnb's newsroom set out principles for five groups it called stakeholders: guests, hosts, communities, shareholders and employees. The first principle listed for guests was the safety of the community. The post said several metrics would be considered when bonuses were awarded to employees, progress on guest safety among them.

It named the measures. Airbnb would track the number of personal safety incidents and the rate of property damage. It would track the share of stays in which both host and guest had a verified identity, which it gave as 70% globally as of January 2020. And it would track the percentage of listings that were verified, with the goal of 100 percent by 15 December 2020. Bloomberg News put the number of listings to be verified at seven million. A new Stakeholder Committee of the board was to be chaired by Belinda Johnson once she moved from chief operating officer to a seat on the board.

The company did not claim the work was done. “We are early in our work. And we are far from being a perfect company, which is why we want to share what we’re doing,” the post said.

Four days later came the money and a list of what was already running. Airbnb said it had expanded manual screening of high-risk reservations flagged by its automated systems in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, so that unauthorized parties could be stopped before they began. A Neighborhood Support Line for nuisances that needed a real-time response was available in the US and was to be expanded globally through 2020. Hosts around the world were offered discount coupons to buy noise detector devices. Under a Guest Guarantee, Airbnb said a guest who arrived at a listing that fell short of its accuracy standards would be rebooked into one of equal or greater value or given 100 percent of their money back.

Airbnb also published its own safety figures. Between 1 October 2018 and 30 September 2019, it said, 0.06 percent of trips had a safety-related issue reported by a host or guest, and 0.03 percent of trips had a claim of $500 or more paid out under its Host Guarantee.

How it was read at the time

The business press tied the safety push to the stock market. Bloomberg News reported on 17 January that Airbnb was laying the groundwork for a public market debut later in 2020. Dennis Schaal of Skift wrote the same day that Airbnb had many critics and knew its stated goals would be closely examined, and he called the update another step toward becoming a public company. ShortTermRentalz wrote that, with an initial public offering planned for 2020, the Los Angeles removals were a signal to potential investors that Airbnb meant to enforce its new policies, as well as an effort to ease the concerns of local residents.

One critic had spoken a month earlier, when the party ban was set out. In a statement to Fox News reported on 6 December 2019, Mike Lux, president of American Family Voices and AirbnbWatch, called the comments of Airbnb's chief executive, Brian Chesky, “hollow promises that will do nothing to improve the safety for guests staying at Airbnbs nor neighbors living next to them.”

What it meant for hosts

For a host in January 2020, the Hollywood Hills removals showed how the party ban would be enforced.

• A police list was enough. Airbnb acted on information from the Los Angeles police, and citations and cease-and-desist orders at an address were part of the record it cited.
• Removal took the bookings with it. Every upcoming reservation at the 28 listings was canceled, and a suspended owner had to send documents showing good standing with the city to be considered for a return.
• Screening moved to the front of the booking. Reservations flagged as high-risk were being reviewed by hand in the US and five other countries and territories.
• Neighbors in the US had a direct line to the company, and hosts were offered discounted noise detectors to catch a problem first.
• Verification was coming to every listing, with a company goal of 100 percent by 15 December 2020. Under the Guest Guarantee, a listing that fell short of the accuracy standards could cost its host the stay.

Sources

1. Airbnb Newsroom, 2020 Airbnb Update (21 January 2020).
2. Airbnb Newsroom, An Update on Our Work to Serve All Stakeholders (17 January 2020).
3. NBC Los Angeles, Airbnb Removes Listings of 28 ‘Nuisance’ Properties in Hollywood Hills (6 January 2020).
4. CBS Los Angeles, Airbnb Removes 28 Homes Identified By LAPD As 'Chronic Party Houses' (6 January 2020).
5. FOX 11 Los Angeles, Airbnb removes listings for 28 'chronic party houses' identified by LAPD in the Hollywood Hills (6 January 2020).
6. ShortTermRentalz, Airbnb de-lists 28 properties in mass action on party house ban (7 January 2020).
7. Bloomberg News (read on Bloomberg Law, open part of the page), Airbnb Revamps Corporate Governance, Tying Bonuses to Safety (17 January 2020).
8. Skift (open part of the page), 6 Takeaways From Airbnb’s Manifesto on Stakeholder Capitalism Ahead of Davos (17 January 2020).
9. FOX 5 DC (Fox News report), Airbnb officially bans 'party houses,' reveals new safety guidelines 2 months after deadly Halloween shooting (6 December 2019).