Hurricane Matthew has reached Florida's shores. Millions of people are in the evacuation zones. Many will lack a convenient high-and-dry retreat---especially because Matthew is likely to beat down on regions that have never dealt with a storm of this magnitude. Some will be able to seek shelter in homes and apartments that are not standard disaster relief. Airbnb is offering over 3,000 accommodations in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina to Hurricane Matthew evacuees, and they're absolutely free.
This is all part of the company's disaster response program, which it activated for Hurricane Matthew on Thursday. Participating hosts---people whose homes are out of the storm's reach---will open their doors for free until their state's predicted all-clear date: that's projected to be October 11 for South Carolina, and the 12th and 13th for Florida and Georgia, respectively. It's a pretty lovely gesture: There is no financial incentive for the hosts, other than Airbnb waiving small service fees. "Our hosts do this because they want to help those in need," Airbnb spokesperson Nick Shapiro told WIRED.
Airbnb has been developing its emergency response strategy since Hurricane Sandy, during which about 1,400 New York Airbnb hosts offered free rooms for hurricane victims of their own accord. In 2013, the company launched a disaster response tool that makes it easy for hosts to list their accommodations and connect with people stranded by disasters. "This was profound," says Patrick Meier, a humanitarian technology expert who consults for the World Bank, the Australian Red Cross, and Facebook. "Airbnb changed its code order to allow people to rent out their place for zero dollars, because you could not do that otherwise."
According to Meier, Airbnb's humanitarian response capabilities are way ahead of other tech companies trying to lend a hand in disaster response. "We've seen time and time again how these technologies and social media platforms have been used in disasters. It saves lives and helps restore livelihoods and so on," Meier says. "But only Airbnb has hired a full-time disaster response person who understands our information needs, the pressures we're under, how we work as an international humanitarian community." That specialized knowledge is vital in helping Airbnb determine which hosts to contact in what region, how to vet hosts and guests, how to avoid over crowding---and it's payed off.
Since 2013, Airbnb hosts have helped house people displaced by more than 20 disasters, ranging from flooding in Louisiana to earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan to the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. Hosts opening their doors in advance of Hurricane Matthew is only the company's most recent disaster relief effort. "Other companies should be paying attention to this, and following suit," Meier says.
