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Airbnb: Hosts let out properties to help with cost of living crisis [1]
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Date: 2023-12
Homeowners rely on letting out their properties to pay the bills during the cost of living crisis, according to Airbnb.
Speaking at an event on the housing crisis yesterday, Airbnb’s Amanda Cupples said people are using the holiday let platform “to make ends meet” in difficult times.
“We are in a cost of living crisis,” she said. “People are using hosting really as a way to help them make ends meet, to pay their mortgage, to pay their heating bills, etc.”
Airbnb hosts can choose to rent out single rooms, as envisioned when the platform launched in 2007, or whole properties, which have come to dominate the listings over the years.
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In the UK, most people with a second home were in the highest income quintile, according to the 2021/22 English Housing Survey. The most common reason for having a second home was for use as a holiday home.
Cupples was speaking as part of an Airbnb-sponsored event in central London hosted by Politico, entitled The housing crisis: The evolving landscape.
The representative for the short-term let company, which has been accused of contributing to the dire shortage of homes to rent in tourist destinations such as Cornwall, said the company did not want to make the shortage worse.
“Airbnb is not about exacerbating the housing crisis,” she said.
Conor O’Shea from Generation Rent told openDemocracy it’s renters who face real hardship thanks to the short-term let market.
“Short-term lets are exacerbating the cost of renting crisis by taking homes out of reach for those who want to live in them long-term, driving up prices and reducing choice for tenants,” he said.
“Generation Rent research found 29 homes a day are lost from long-term to short-term rental, and this rate is completely unsustainable at a time when we are suffering the highest rents in a generation.”
“Tenants are the ones who truly need a lifeline in this situation,” O’Shea added. “The government must step in with a proper licensing scheme to ensure that local authorities can choose if a short-term let is permitted and have the right to deny it if the area requires homes for families to live in long-term.”
There are currently no rules in England that limit the number of properties that can be leased as holiday lets, or the duration of those lets. The UK government has committed to regulating short-term lets but is yet to implement anything. The Scottish government, however, introduced a licensing scheme for short-term lets in October, with anyone found to not have a licence facing a £2,500 fine.
In April, it announced plans following a consultation to introduce planning permission if an existing home is to become a short-term let. It is also consulting on a registration scheme, though it has not published the outcome of the consultation, which closed in June.
At the event, which also heard from new housing minister Lee Rowley, Cupples claimed there was not enough data on the impact of Airbnb, and that “we know very little” about its effect on the housing crisis.
The holiday let provider, which made $1.9 billion in profit in 2023, refused to be drawn on whether it had had recent meetings with Labour.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/airbnb-housing-crisis-cost-of-living-short-term-lets/
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