Neighbours in our apartment block are moving out – and in again – in droves. Giving up their own beds week after week to become hosts to streams of guests, many of them strangers.
I see my neighbours’ photographs online along with the wonderful feedback their hospitality in our building attracts. As I arrive home from work, I might see them greet their guests with blissful Airbnb smiles as they help wheel suitcases into our expensive-to-maintain building before slipping off to their free or cheaper lodgings elsewhere and pocketing the difference. One host I know sleeps on her mother’s couch when her own place is booked.
It’s an awkward dance to watch as hosts and guests manoeuvre in this rediscovered liminal space between the personal and the professional – this commercialisation of what used to be called the private home. But there’s a good quid in it if you’re lucky enough to have your name on a title-deed or lease pretty much anywhere in pretty much any world city – be it London or Sydney.
That’s if you’re prepared to pack your personals and other obvious signs of your DNA into a weekend bag and you don’t mind strangers sleeping in your bed. Hosts must think a few mattress protectors and a bit of couch surfing are a small price to pay for earning hotel prices from their short-term rented home.
One Airbnb host in our building actually lives permanently elsewhere. Mostly his guests come and go with polite, ghostlike, anonymity and silence. A manager leads them in. Occasionally they ask for advice or help. We oblige.
Recently, though, we had a bad experience. Thick cigarette smoke drifted out into a common area. It stank. People came and went at different times of the day and night. Unusually, the blinds to the unit were drawn for a few days. We could see this from our balcony. You notice these things when you share common space and walls with others. For some of us, there is still an element of looking out for each other in suburbs with high crime rates as ours is.
I emailed (and texted) the host about the smoke and people traffic. Three days later the host, with whom we had always had cordial dealings, replied. He said I must have been at my “peephole” 24 hours a day watching the comings and goings from his apartment.
Whether his guests drew the blinds or not was, he said, none of my business. Yes, he had a non-smoking policy. But that didn’t mean guests could not light up on the balcony once in awhile.
I had made out his guest was a chain smoker, he said. He suggested we have the bottom gap of our door sealed if we were so sensitive. He liked to think we still lived in a democracy “not some eastern European gulag”.
But the best bit was a counter complaint from him about the cooking smells coming from our place. He wondered whether we should now ban cooking odours from the building out of respect for those who found them offensive.
He further told me he had passed on my emails to his guest and that I should be cautious in future about the tone of my correspondence.
Airbnb and other such platforms must deal with what appears to be a global backlash to the home sharing economy. Reports indicate that new UK rules limiting short term rentals to 90 nights per year will curtail Airbnb’s revenue by more than £325m.
Meanwhile, we are no longer on speaking terms with one of our building’s hosts. But we are considering becoming Airbnb hosts ourselves. Why wouldn’t we? We’ve just bought a new, fluid-resistant mattress protector.
By Sonya Voumard
The post Airbnb: There Goes the Neighbourhood appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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