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Here are the things that happen in life that affect us as AirBNB hosts. This weekend a young man escaped from a Federal prison roughly a 100 miles south of here. Lots of warnings about how dangerous he is/was and to take proper precautions. Ties to Rhode Island, but had also lived in this part of New England. This morning, he tried to rob a bank about 1.3 miles from my home and then another one, I just learned even closer. For the first time in about 15 years, I locked my front door during the daylight hours. As my young guest leaves her class at around 4PM, I realized that I was going to have to send her a text suggesting that she take an Uber and that I would pay for it.
The helicopters are still circling above our house, but we were alerted that he was caught just before I would have had to send that text.
I find that I am relieved that I donât have to tell this young woman from rural OK that it is dangerous here. Of course, paying for her to have a safe journey to our home was the only thing to do⌠so glad I didnât need to make her scared.
Oh my gosh, thatâs crazy!! What a thoughtful host you are to make sure that the guest was safe, even if wasnât needed in the end.
I remember reading some article years ago, from a host, talking about the repercussions of using the word âsafeâ when describing a neighborhood. He cautioned to never use that word in the listing description, as itâs so subjective. He suggested using words like âwell lit, family neighborhood, walkableâ, etc. I found it so eye-opening as Iâd always used the word âsafeâ but I promptly changed my listings. Iâm not telling this because of anything you wrote, just how odd concepts of âsafetyâ are. Your poor guest could have had this experience a block away from her too, but itâs more stressful of course when sheâs away.
We had a car stolen with child inside a few streets down from our flat. Cue helicopters, blanket police texts, etc. The child was found in the car a couple of hours later - untouched and under a tree (for shade as it gets really hot here). A carjacking is rare, but I am guessing the carjacker wasnât expecting a baby in the back.
There is crime everywhere.
Your thoughtfulness towards the young lady is really lovely.
Interesting! I always avoid using the word safe. Itâs an annoying question to me and I try to direct them to google the neighborhood. Itâs NYC so no where is truly safe. But telling that to a guest just sounds rude.
Yes watching it on the newsâŚapparently in North America, the news reports are saying, you are allowed to fly with guns in your checked luggage as long as they arenât loaded and are âsecuredâ⌠terrifying.
I didnât realise that anyone could do what this guy has done and open his luggage in the baggage hall and load a gun.
I agree. When people ask if our neighborhood is safe, I always say that safe is a relative term. I explain that weâve never been victims of a crime, but there are no guarantees in life. If they arenât from the U.S. I explain that as pretty much every American can get a gun our definitions of safety may differ.
That situation actually reminds me of Brussels on March 22, 2016 (with the airport and metro bombing â the metro station attacked being just 10 minutes from home). I was hosting a group of US college students at the time touring Europe. Luckily never had to sent a text message as the bombings happened quite early in the morning and they were still at home, so they binge-watched Netflix instead of visiting the (lockdown) city. I needed to talk a lot about what was happening, and now I remember they were from Newton, CT, where the Sandy Hook shooting happened.
On an unrelated note, the first people who sent messages to check on me were past guests. My own family called 5 hours after the news broke (to their credit, they knew I was safe).
