I think there are about 500K Homeless in America, would it make sense to first offer about 20K of them some free housing?
That's a bit presumptuous, don't you think? There's nothing inherently contradictory about "we need to look after americans before look after refugees" and "we need to do something about homelessness". The only contradiction is that the former is a policy of one political party, and the latter is a policy of the other political party.
Can you give an example? I'm honestly stumped trying to think of one concrete policy initiative put forward on this topic.
>As part of President Joe Biden's new infrastructure plan, he unveiled nearly $5 billion in new grants to state and local governments for rental assistance and the development of affordable housing. In doing so, he aims to get 130,000 homeless people into homes.
https://www.newsweek.com/once-homeless-now-im-multi-milliona...
At the same time many hotels and airbnbs are under capacity because travel is restricted. It is a fair question why the homeless aren't hosted there. We don't have to expect Airbnb to pay for it but the government could if they actually cared about people, instead of terrorizing school kids and bankrupting the state with neverending lockdowns and restrictions.
First, Airbnb is very host-centered. The host can pick their guests, make changes to their reservations, etc. I think if they said “your house will host homeless, but don’t worry we will pay you anyway”, they’d lose 70% of US hosts regardless. The shelter is only part of the problem with homelessness, going hand in hand with at least mental health care.
Second, it may have to do with prices. I imagine a night in Kabul cost $15–25 for an apartment (prior to the withdrawal, at which point they probably lowered further); now compare to prices in say Washington or SF area. Imagine Airbnb declares a plan for fighting homelessness, and has to pay actual market rates to its hosts in major US cities.
All in all it looks like it could be an interesting idea for a non-profit, but it doesn’t seem to make sense as a long-term tactic for a business like Airbnb.
This could be a good question to ask companies like Booking.com though, where hosts are generally not expected to be able to choose whether to accommodate the name on the booking.
These refugees aren't in Kabul any more; airbnb is probably paying market rates, or close to them, though perhaps not in DC or SF.
So, the Middle East includes Afghanistan now? I swear the borders seem to advance every year.
> The Greater Middle East, is a geo-political term, introduced in March 2004 in a paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the U.S. administration's preparatory work for the G8 summit of June 2004, denoting a vaguely defined region that includes the Arab world plus Afghanistan, Cyprus, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey.[1] The paper presented a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East and North Africa.[2][3] Previously, by Adam Garfinkle of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Greater Middle East had been defined as the MENA region together with Central Asia and the Caucasus.[4]
> The future of this Greater Middle East has sometimes been referred to as the "new Middle East", first so by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who in Dubai in June 2006 presented the second-term Bush administration's vision for the region's future. Rice said would be achieved through 'constructive chaos', a phrase she repeated a few weeks later during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the 2006 Lebanon War had broken out; the meaning of this phrase and the Bush administration's vision have been much debated since.[5][6][7] The efforts to achieve this new Middle East are sometimes called "The Great Middle East Project".[8][9]
If we're using the utilitarian argument, shouldn't we be pouring money into effective altruism (eg. bill gates funding malaria prevention programs), which do a even better job at preventing death?
I personally read it as a general comment about housing supply.
Edit: To clarify, I’m happy about what AirBNB is doing here and support it fully. I think it’s possible to be concerned about housing from multiple angles at the same time though.
I genuinely think it’s a stretch to assume that a person advocating for an additional large group of units literally translates to someone that wants more people on the street. Furthermore I find that reason to be far more convoluted than what would constitute an easy “gotcha.”
“You said you want to help a problem and therefore you don’t want that problem helped. My proof is that you brought up the problem in the first place.” is something I have difficulty digesting.
The homelessness problem needs a more long-term solution than 25k shelters for a limited time. You can read about Toronto leasing hotels for the homeless if you want to read more about some solutions that are being worked on, for example.
https://www.shareable.net/public-housing-works-lessons-from-...
Airbnb will probably house these refugees for a few weeks or months until they have more permanent housing from a non-profit or the government or they're simply on their feet. While refugees may have more needs than the average person, as a group they don't have the widespread problems with mental health and substance abuse that the unsheltered homeless population does.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't help the homeless, but it does mean that's a much heavier ask, one more suited to either the government, or non-profits specifically targeted at the issue.
I work near their office and remember a couple years ago they were offering their employees self-defense classes after several employees got attacked.
If you want to convert a dwelling to short stay accommodation you have to also make it available for x days per year for crisis accommodation.
I’m personally not a big fan of these sorts of neoliberal public private partnerships. But at least with conventional thinking it’s not that bad of an idea. Not sure why you’re getting all these downvotes.
Trying to twist the private sector's arm into doing this themselves is stupid, it's not their wheelhouse, just tax their profits and have the government do it.
SF is prepared to spend 1.1 billion to address homelessness, which I think is just shy of the federal refugee program budget.
The fights to combat exclusionary / single family zoning are in part to create more affordable housing.
It seems we, as a society, are doing a lot to fight homelessness, but relatively little to help resettle refugees.
Two things can be true at the same time. Scoring business points AND caring about Afghans.
Giving them temporary accomodation isn't going to make their lives better in the long term. Giving these 20k Afghans temporary accommodation may actually make their lives better while they transition to permanent housing, because homelessness is actually their biggest problem, not drugs or mental health.
“Between 80 and 90 percent of outlays actually returned to the US economy.”
Your tax dollars went to pay defense contractors, construction firms, anyone who pounced on an opportunity.Imagine, for example, a natural disaster strikes and you're forced to either save the live of your own child or a complete stranger. Anyone would choose his own child (assuming exactly similar circumstances). That does not mean the other childs live is worth less. It's exactly the same thing if it's about people in your country or a foreign one - of course, your relation is less intense, but it still holds.
Other comments explain why you'd choose contrary to this in this case, but I don't think we should assume bad faith in the parent.