After spending $8 million dollars to defeat of San Francisco’s Proposition F, with some anticipating it will spend as much as $100 million next year to fight similar ballot measures, Airbnb is already in the process of organizing “grassroots lobbyists”, mobilizing its own users to work as advocates. Airbnb is planning on funding these “city-based guilds”, as well as providing them with Airbnb staff support, in an effort to fight similar legislation in other cities.
Meanwhile, the website InsideAirbnb.com has been “adding data to the debate”, by providing information, not only on the number of listings in a particular city, but also on whether the listing is for a single room or an entire rental unit. And this distinction is important where Airbnb and other hosting platforms have diverted a significant portion of housing units, compared to what has been made available to renters in recent years.
