<story><title>Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/technology/airbnb-anti-discrimination-rules.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pascalmemories</author><text>If I understand correctly, you&amp;#x27;re happy to be the one discriminating against disabled people, old people and people with children.&lt;p&gt;But you&amp;#x27;re not happy if you&amp;#x27;re on the receiving end of any discrimination.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t you see the contradiction there ?&lt;p&gt;Anti-discrimination policies are about ensuring people have equal access to services and facilities (whether it&amp;#x27;s contentious toilets or hotels or whatever).&lt;p&gt;You seem to indicate in your jurisdiction that renting an apartment without safety rails is OK, but in many others it&amp;#x27;s not OK and you&amp;#x27;d be in violation of safety laws (and also discrimination laws).  It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter that you live there sometime - you&amp;#x27;re renting it as a facility and should be expected to comply with safety and whatever other laws apply.  And if you do it via AirBnB, you also need to comply with their rules regardless of legal requirements.  And AirBnB get to change the rules when they want and you either agree or stop using them.</text></item><item><author>nicolas_t</author><text>As an host, I&amp;#x27;ll never discriminate on the basis of religion, sex orientation, color of skin, national origin or gender identity.&lt;p&gt;When it comes to disability, I might refuse someone whose disability would cause risk in using the apartment and might have an accident because the apartment is not safe for someone who&amp;#x27;s disabled (the building is 300 years old, there&amp;#x27;s no elevator, the stair in the duplex apartment doesn&amp;#x27;t have handrails)... It&amp;#x27;s a risk if the person then has an accident...&lt;p&gt;Similarly in term of age, I would not rent to couples with young children because it&amp;#x27;s too risky.&lt;p&gt;So, it&amp;#x27;s discrimination but it&amp;#x27;s mostly because this is not an hotel, it&amp;#x27;s an apartment in which I live part of the year and it&amp;#x27;s not adapted for disabled people or couples with young children because I&amp;#x27;m not in those categories.&lt;p&gt;That said, as someone whose wife is asian, I fully understand the problem. It&amp;#x27;s annoying and painful when people discriminate based on race.&lt;p&gt;In our case, we show both my face and wife face on our Airbnb profile photo because we prefer to have a host refuse on the basis of wife&amp;#x27;s nationality than to give money or stay at the house of a racist host. I&amp;#x27;ve had a bad experience before that with a host who was nice to me when I met him and then wasn&amp;#x27;t as nice 5 minutes later once my wife arrived... The fact that he earned money from our stay galls me...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nicolas_t</author><text>The main thing, is that I&amp;#x27;m not a professional renter. The primary use of the apartment is for myself almost half of the year.  I also rent more than half of the time outside of airbnb on Homeaway...&lt;p&gt;In the jurisdiction where I&amp;#x27;m renting, there&amp;#x27;s no requirements for handrails. The requirements for short terms rental are basically the same as the requirements for renting an apartment long term and not all apartments are disabled friendly... It&amp;#x27;s also in an historical district, even if we wanted to we would never get the permit to install an elevator...&lt;p&gt;Also, I&amp;#x27;ve never said I wouldn&amp;#x27;t accept old people. If they have no disabilities that would present a risk for them, they&amp;#x27;re welcome.&lt;p&gt;If I owned a hotel, I would have rooms with disabled access of course. But, it&amp;#x27;s different when you&amp;#x27;re renting the apartment that is also your habitation (which is the original purpose of Airbnb)...&lt;p&gt;Now, that said, I fully support laws that force businesses to accommodate people with disabilities. I also think that any new buildings should be built with this in mind. But are we going to destroy historic old buildings because they don&amp;#x27;t conform to the current regulations?</text></comment>
<story><title>Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/technology/airbnb-anti-discrimination-rules.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pascalmemories</author><text>If I understand correctly, you&amp;#x27;re happy to be the one discriminating against disabled people, old people and people with children.&lt;p&gt;But you&amp;#x27;re not happy if you&amp;#x27;re on the receiving end of any discrimination.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t you see the contradiction there ?&lt;p&gt;Anti-discrimination policies are about ensuring people have equal access to services and facilities (whether it&amp;#x27;s contentious toilets or hotels or whatever).&lt;p&gt;You seem to indicate in your jurisdiction that renting an apartment without safety rails is OK, but in many others it&amp;#x27;s not OK and you&amp;#x27;d be in violation of safety laws (and also discrimination laws).  It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter that you live there sometime - you&amp;#x27;re renting it as a facility and should be expected to comply with safety and whatever other laws apply.  And if you do it via AirBnB, you also need to comply with their rules regardless of legal requirements.  And AirBnB get to change the rules when they want and you either agree or stop using them.</text></item><item><author>nicolas_t</author><text>As an host, I&amp;#x27;ll never discriminate on the basis of religion, sex orientation, color of skin, national origin or gender identity.&lt;p&gt;When it comes to disability, I might refuse someone whose disability would cause risk in using the apartment and might have an accident because the apartment is not safe for someone who&amp;#x27;s disabled (the building is 300 years old, there&amp;#x27;s no elevator, the stair in the duplex apartment doesn&amp;#x27;t have handrails)... It&amp;#x27;s a risk if the person then has an accident...&lt;p&gt;Similarly in term of age, I would not rent to couples with young children because it&amp;#x27;s too risky.&lt;p&gt;So, it&amp;#x27;s discrimination but it&amp;#x27;s mostly because this is not an hotel, it&amp;#x27;s an apartment in which I live part of the year and it&amp;#x27;s not adapted for disabled people or couples with young children because I&amp;#x27;m not in those categories.&lt;p&gt;That said, as someone whose wife is asian, I fully understand the problem. It&amp;#x27;s annoying and painful when people discriminate based on race.&lt;p&gt;In our case, we show both my face and wife face on our Airbnb profile photo because we prefer to have a host refuse on the basis of wife&amp;#x27;s nationality than to give money or stay at the house of a racist host. I&amp;#x27;ve had a bad experience before that with a host who was nice to me when I met him and then wasn&amp;#x27;t as nice 5 minutes later once my wife arrived... The fact that he earned money from our stay galls me...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saiya-jin</author><text>why the attack?&lt;p&gt;the fact that he didn&amp;#x27;t put in enough safety in complicated apartment is the reason for you to attack him? Well maybe it technically challenging, would make the place ugly or is near impossible given the layout of the place or materials used to build it. You cannot just drill anywhere you want in buildings that are few hundred years old for example.&lt;p&gt;there is a distinction between sharing an apt and going to hotel. Latter is vastly more regulated, former is a bit wild west and exactly the reason why people are using it (because with this comes usually lower price if more people will be accommodated, more homely feel with more equipment ala full kitchen etc.).&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s not try to make private apartments hotels, because then we end up with... just more fugly hotels.</text></comment>