AirBnB never should have set up such an unsafe system, but surely the decisions of the renters are at fault as well. I personally would never even consider allowing people who were not carefully screened by myself to have free reign with my property.
I'm pretty sure this is getting large enough to garner the attention of politicians. That may be a positive thing, since AirBnB and their clients are apparently not taking care of safety and procedures adequately on their own.
Given that most apartments already have no subletting clauses, I don't think additional regulation would help anything. I'm hoping this dies down before some politician tries to make some knee-jerk law, much like that state AG did with craigslist awhile back.
I have to agree, actually. The government being involved should be a last resort, and there's no indication this is a truly widespread or dangerous issue currently. Ideally, the private parties involved will figure it out.
My take is the #1 fault is the alledged scumbags who did alleged bad things to the host's property. The #2 fault is the hosts for showing such utter naivete and ignorance about (a) what to leave in the apartment, and (b) understanding what could possibly happen when the strangers stay there and accepting those risks as the flip side of the coin. To the extent AirBnB has done anything wrong or imperfect, it's farther down the list than these actors in the drama. And all of this assumes that the alleged incidents happened exactly as they were portrayed, and were not in fact fraudulent "hit jobs" -- an issue that has not been settled yet, or rather should not be settled in any reasonably skeptical person's mind, given the sum total and nature of the "evidence" and the market context.
In my opinion, AirBnB should be providing more of an upfront opportunity for a host to screen a prospective client in advance, with no pressure. If they can't do this, they need to do a very good job of it themselves. That's the crucial aspect of their involvement. From my reading of the EJ story, she had no opportunity to learn anything about her client prior to accepting the reservation. AirBnB has changed this since then, I believe?
Regardless of these incidents, ad-hoc home rental is a potentially dangerous situation for both sides of the deal. It's positive that this controversy has prompted AirBnB to go beyond making jokes about piano thievery, and realize that safety of everyone involved is a critical issue.
I'm pretty sure this is getting large enough to garner the attention of politicians. That may be a positive thing, since AirBnB and their clients are apparently not taking care of safety and procedures adequately on their own.