Committing to help protect renters as CDC eviction moratorium expires
Airbnb is committed to being part of the solution when it comes to keeping tenants in their homes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national moratorium on residential evictions set to expire later this month, starting today, Airbnb will ban new US listings when a city notifies us that the listings are located at rental properties where the tenant has been evicted due to nonpayment of rent, and where the tenant had been protected by the CDC moratorium.
This COVID-19 Renter Protection Policy will be in effect until the end of the year – at which point we will review the policy, including seeking input from cities, to determine if it should be extended. We are announcing this COVID-19 Renter Protection Policy today as we know many cities are actively working to prepare for a potential wave of evictions once the moratorium is lifted.
Pursuant to this initiative, jurisdictions can partner with Airbnb to implement this policy by sharing information about properties that may be listed on Airbnb and that are subject to an eviction order based on nonpayment of rent from July 1, 2021 through the end of the year.
To support the COVID-19 Renter Protection Policy, Airbnb will appoint Senior Policy Development Manager Andrew Kalloch as the Head of COVID-19 Housing Policy, to coordinate this initiative. Mr. Kalloch will lead the company’s engagement with cities across the US that are interested in working together to activate this commitment in their jurisdictions.
Since our start in 2007, when two of our co-founders put air mattresses on their living room floor to earn money to make their rent, Airbnb has always been a platform dedicated to helping people stay in their homes and reap the benefits of home sharing. According to a recent survey of our global Host community, 42 percent of Airbnb Hosts in the US reported that the income they earned by sharing their home in the last year has helped them to stay in their home. This commitment has never been stronger than today in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic – and it is why we are doing our part to disincentivize evictions, in collaboration with cities nationwide.
By working with cities to prevent landlords from using our marketplace to profit from removing a vulnerable long-term tenant from their home based on non-payment of rent, we believe we can send a strong message that will help keep people in their homes at this critical time.
In addition, we invite competing rental sites to join us in this effort, to ensure industry-wide action to help safeguard the communities most at risk from the expected wave of evictions.
Here’s why we are taking this step
Last September, the CDC issued a temporary nationwide moratorium on residential evictions, to stem the economic hardship that many Americans have already experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact has been clear: the number of eviction filings over the past nine months has been reduced by half, compared to the same time last year.
But with the federal moratorium set to expire on June 30, a looming crisis is coming into deeper and increasingly alarming focus. According to a recent analysis conducted by The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 11 million Americans are behind on their rent and could face eviction when the CDC’s protection expires in June. Like much of the disruption caused by the pandemic, this will have the harshest repercussions on communities of color, with Black renters nearly four times as likely to be behind on their rent than white renters. In addition, nearly 450,000 renters between the ages of 55 and 64 expect to be evicted within the next two months.
Here’s what comes next
Over the coming weeks, led by Mr. Kalloch, Airbnb will engage cities on implementing the COVID-19 Renter Protection Policy in their communities. This outreach will include a specific focus on those cities that are experiencing a high rate of evictions. Jurisdictions interested in partnering with Airbnb on this initiative can contact evictionshelp@airbnb.com.
About Airbnb
Airbnb was born in 2007 when two Hosts welcomed three guests to their San Francisco home, and has since grown to 4 million Hosts who have welcomed more than 900 million guest arrivals across over 220 countries and regions. Travel on Airbnb keeps more of the financial benefits of tourism with the people and places that make it happen. Airbnb has generated billions of dollars in earnings for Hosts, 90 percent of whom are individuals listing their own homes, more than half of whom are women, and one in five employed Hosts are either teachers or healthcare workers. In 2019, Airbnb directly supported 300,000 jobs in just 30 destinations, averaging nine jobs for every 1,000 guest arrivals. Travel on Airbnb also has generated more than $3.4 billion in tax revenue for 29,000 jurisdictions around the world. Airbnb has helped advance more than 1,000 regulatory frameworks for short-term rentals, including in 70% of our top 200 geographies (pre-pandemic). In late 2020, to support our continued expansion and diversification, we launched the City Portal to provide governments with an automated one-stop shop that supports data sharing and compliance with local registration rules. We continue to invest in innovations and tools to support our ongoing work with governments around the world to advance travel that best serves communities.