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Yet another example of what Air is supposed to be preventing when they don’t allow holiday weekend rentals?
Police said they responded just after 12:30 a.m. to a property in Pittsburgh’s East Allegheny neighborhood, where about 200 people had been attending a party at a house that had been rented via Airbnb.
More than 90 rounds were fired inside the house, prompting some partygoers to jump out of windows, Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott E. Schubert said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.
Absolutely. I do hope though that the readership, and the general public, realise that the fact that the property was rented via Airbnb has nothing to do with the tragedy.
As the article says:
the latest in a string of high-profile incidents of gun violence that have unfolded across the country in recent days
Meanwhile in Florida, 4/13 more awful events. journalists had to say it was an Airbnb rental instead of vacation rental where drug dealing & murder occurred.
Journalists love clickbait because they love money. If saying “Airbnb” instead of whatever other words they might use will get people to click on it, they do. Now if I see “Airbnb” in a headline on my newsfeed (usually Yahoo or twitter) I don’t click on it. I just wait for someone here to tell me what happened.
Eventually Airbnb will be so ubiquitous that it will barely register in a story. As I’ve said many times, most people are killed by someone they know but they don’t quit having friends and family, coworkers or living in buildings with other people.
Since I refuse to read the story maybe someone will tell me if this is addressed in the article? How did this booking get past their filters? And really, Airbnb can’t prevent parties. These incidents happen 100% with absentee landlords but they aren’t going to disallow that because that’s where they make their money.
What filters? Sure, they have a party-risk algorithm, but it obviously doesn’t work as intended and I’m not really sure how it could. It’s only based on statistical probability, not real life. I’ve read plenty of posts by hosts and guests alike who were having a booking blocked by that party algorithm where it obviously wasn’t necessary- great repeat guests being blocked, guests who were under 25 but who had 20 5* reviews and whose idea of a “party” was playing video games with a couple of friends, a 24 year old couple with a child just trying to book a place for a family holiday for a week being blocked by the “party” algorithm.
Then there is the opposite- hosts getting booking requests from 18 year olds who want to rent for a graduation “gathering”, etc, where the algorithm for some reason never kicks in.
No algorithm is going to prevent parties- obviously it’s the responsibility of the host to monitor what goes on at their property, but of course many don’t.
How do you know there were no red flags? Just because it was a small group from 85 miles away (maybe- guests can say they’re from anywhere and I’ve had perfectly lovely guests whose profile said they were from somewhere they had moved from- they just neglected to update their profile info), doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been any red flags if the host had been the type to ask the right questions and try to rout out any oddities. Perhaps the host did do a lot of vetting, but perhaps not.
So much of this is just plain trust. We trust people aren’t lying to us. & I’ve seen lots of support for “new account/no review” guests, for example. Who’d guess someone from 85 miles away is throwing a 200 person party?
Maybe it was an IB. Maybe the host sensed issues and wanted to cancel but ABB wouldn’t w/o penalty. (Wouldn’t that be something in this case!?).
And cameras…but who is watching around the clock? The neighbors…why didn’t they contact the police or host? My neighbors know to call me if something is up - I encourage it!
A side note of : I thought it was total BS that ABB expressed regret/sympathy for everyone except host:
“Our hearts go out to all who were impacted – including loved ones of those who lost their lives, injured victims and neighbors,” Airbnb said in its statement to CNN.”
It doesn’t have to be. Hosts can insist guests show government issued photo ID, sign a contract that has the guest’s real name and address, use cameras at the entrances, use noise awareness devices, and so on.
If you read the article, they did- they called about excessive noise and so many people- the cops didn’t come until shooting was reported quite awhile later, it seems.
That’s ashamed. When I was in high school as soon as a good house party got going they’d be there to boot us out. And we weren’t even all packing (& I grew up in a real “hood”). Yes, there were shootings but nothing like we see now. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are, gun violence is everywhere.
It’s not neighbours responsibility to call the police when there is a party at a short term rental. It’s the hosts responsibility to a) vet their guests properly to minimise the chance of bad guests staying.
b) the hosts who are hosting remotely should have had CCTV or similar to vet arrivals and use of their STR .
If they had they could have shut things down before the party got started and the tragedy happened .
I have an AirBnb right behind my personal home & if something is amiss, like a massive party, I will call the police (I’d contact the host first). That doesn’t mean the host has shirked their responsibility, or at least I would not assume so unless it happened frequently.
I consider the people around my rentals, long or short, my neighbors & they treat me the same. We look out for one another.
: I thought it was total BS that ABB expressed regret/sympathy for everyone except host: