Hi @Ash953,
Good on you (as the British say) for helping out. Many of us have been strangers in a strange land. And we all need help sometimes.
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As others have said, do take photos of the mess and shared items in communal areas for reference and that you are recording any discussions with them through BNB’s messaging system. (this should have been done from the start).
Make sure they are clear that they are on a final warning and any further breaking of your house rules including mess and their items left in shared areas will mean you have no choice but to ask them to leave.
When you are having a chat, you can also ask them about where there are moving onto next and make it clear to them (tell a little white lie if you have to) that their room is not available after the end of their stay.
I do hope they will be going home to their family over Christmas so you don’t have them there over the festive season
Maybe you should document on the messaging system, all the conversations you had about staying tidy.
Hello, xxx guest,
This message is to remind you of our discussion about keeping the space tidy and about the parameters of your rental of our private room and shared bath.
On xx day, I reminded you to clean up the mess from the baby feeding.
On xx day, I reminded you to remove the baby bath and other baby contraptions from the shared area.
On xxx day, blah blah blah.
It’s unacceptable to use our home in this manner. We have two other guests renting rooms here. Please immediately comply with our house rules or we will need to make other arrangements. Thank you.
I would also take photos, as suggested by others, just to have this documentation ready.
Then I would call Air and ask if it is possible for this reservation to,be canceled (not by you but by them) and ask that these guests be moved out ASAP. They’ve broken your house rules so there are grounds.
Call a lawyer (often they won’t charge if you call and ask one of you have a case) and find out what to do if they overstay. Be ready because it sounds like they plan to.
@Scullard89 – I mean this kindly ~ you really need to look beyond the end of the nose in this matter because trouble is a-brewing. You seem to be ignoring all the signs of what should be the ‘last straw.’ You want to keep trying to educate your guest even though you wrote, “…being direct has not helped”.
Hel-lo…what more do you need as evidence and sage advice from experienced hosts as reason to send them on their way now. Get Air involved to do the dirty deed.
More so than the cleaning up, the most concerning thing to me is that they are homeless. For you to be housing them for over 30 days and expecting them to cooperate and leave voluntarily at the end of their stay is a stretch.
I don’t know what kind of a rental agreement or lease you have with them but it is highly unlikely you will have the right to remove their property or do any forceful action without severe penalty. I own a LTR in Bend and there are the usual stringent hoops to jump through to get a tenant out. You will likely lose a lot more money than this rental is bringing in.
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See:
And
Also… See more on this thread…We’ve been down this road before…
I used Airbnb when i was homeless. Rental contracts in London tend to be a minimum of 6 months…I was in between places and needed somewhere to stay for a few weeks. It was hugely expensive though and in the end I moved to Poland for the month rather than pay Airbnb rates nightly …
It might be worth mentioning that strictly speaking homeless only has one meaning: without a home. Although there are all sorts of negative stereotypes typically associated with homelessness we have no way of knowing if those apply to the family in question.
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@Scullard89, your statement that you would put the guests’ belongings on the curb and give them a “30” day eviction notice, plus this made up $30/hr charge indicate to me that you are in way over your head. The advice to get lawyer is a good one, and you should anticipate the worst and do it pronto. I agree with @SandyToes that trouble is a-brewing, but it was kind of visible from a mile away. Best of luck! Please tell us the resolution.
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Yes we can’t assume. Like you say it’s being without a home, which was my situation for 6 weeks due to a contract on my new place falling through. I wouldn’t identify with people on the streets though; at the time I was fully employed and it was really just chance that conspired against me.
Still my boss had to deal with stuff from my old place appearing under the desk, in the cupboards etc as I had nowhere else to put it.
For me it was very much a temporary situation and these guests may also be between homes.
Interesting solution! Where in Poland? Did you like living there? I’d really like to visit but I don’t think I have time on my upcoming trip to Prague.
I LOVED Poland!
I’d recommend it to anyone … lovely people, very cheap, lots of history and some beautiful architecture. Some awful architecture too but that’s true of everywhere.
It was a fantastic solution to an irritating problem, and it meant I could absorb the costs of having stuff in storage for a month very easily. I spent less that month I was ‘homeless’ than I would have paid had I been renting normally in London.
At the time I think some of my friends though it was extreme, but it seemed to me paying close to 2k to stay in a London Airbnb for a month was more ridiculous.
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Awesome idea of yours to do that. Saved money and got to experience another culture. What did your Poland Airbnb cost, just curious?
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£250 for the month. Huge win as the London Airbnb would have been 2,000.
All in I spent about £800 all in that month for food, transport, entertainment etc. That was barely above the cost of my London rent for the bedroom I had been renting. My living costs dropped to about 40% of what they had been.
But yeah as you can see, not the typical homeless person at all.
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You are quite the wanderer! Is this in keeping with your IR studies? You have an affinity for experiencing other cultures? Are you between school/jobs in order to do this? I assumed you were early 20s? But now I am thinking mid to late. Here in the US you’d be about 24 or 25 before finishing the PhD program, depending if you went straight through or took gap years.
800 is so cheap…!!! Prague is not as cheap, but then it is high season at Christmas. I got a hotel for $51 a night. All the Airs and Wimdus were too pricey over NYE. We are a bit too far from Poland for a day trip, maybe if we did an overnighter.
So I did talk to her this morning she has been making more of an effort to clean. and we moved all of her baby stuff to her room. I called Airbnb they said that squatting rarely happens but they will make a note about it. They also told me that she has stayed at an Airbnb for two weeks prior to being here and seems to be looking for another place after times up here. The Airbnb fellow also said that they would “step in if she and her boyfriend do decide to squat.” - not sure what that means.
Since she has no money I asked her what her plans were and
She asked if she could take over the lease at my house in January as an surrogate Airbnb host (because I mentioned that I might be putting my house on the market soon month-to-month). I told her straight out no. She needs to go after this trip is up and she seemed upset about that. --That’s when I called Airbnb.
She was on the phone with family today. Hopefully she gets it together. (BF has three other kids and works at a hemp startup. if he does get paid it won’t be for six more months) Now that a case is open with Airbnb I feel better about everything. It’s true about setting boundaries though you can’t just assume that people will respect common spaces. Good news is it’s a slow month so I don’t have a constant flow of people coming and going.
[quote=“SuiteInSeattle, post:25, topic:10182, full:true”]
@Scullard89, your statement that you would put the guests’ belongings on the curb and give them a “30” day eviction notice, plus this made up $30/hr charge indicate to me that you are in way over your head.
I’m telling ya I used to have a big problem with guests staying past check out and ever since I’ve posted that they will be charged $30 an hour past checkout pulled from their deposit I have not had a single person “forget” and stay one minute past 11am. - Helps out my house cleaner a lot.
Wow… So maybe she was planning to overstay? Glad you said something, don’t let these people get ideas!
Airbnb cannot do much about squatters, although in the case of our one forum member named on the above thread I posted, Air stepped in and moved the guest, presumably to a motel to get her out of the woman’s house where she was professionally squatting. This was an egregious case, and Air is right, it probably does not happen all that often.
As for this guest, geeze… you have to wonder about the judgment of someone who hooks up with an unemployed guy who already has three kids. I thought the hemp industry was booming now that Oregon is legal. Why is he having trouble getting a job?
Yet none of this is your worry. Glad you planted the seed that she can’t stay and she has run out of options at your house.
I would really think twice before accepting long term guests. Read carefully through the articles and threads I posted and then I think you will agree!
My max is 21 days.
Keep us posted!
I was last in Prague in 2000 (and Romania for three months! Imagine what that was like!) It was very cheap then. You have to go further east now if you’re after bargains.
Yes, I’m very much a wanderer and I think it’s because I’m not risk averse, very inquisitive and frankly, nosy. I’m 38. I just ended a decade long career in higher education to follow my dreams and start my own business.
Don’t feel bad about thinking I was much younger; even people who meet me in person put me at late twenties.
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You can achieve the same result by being FIRM. Sorry, absolutely no late check outs. I have limited time to turn the house over for the new guests. Thank you for your cooperation.
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