Rachel Bassini had rented her New York condo out through Airbnb before, but in February 2014, when she rented it out to "Jeffrey," she got more than she bargained for. Lured in by photos of him with a wife and young daughter, she figured the fledgling user was trustworthy. She returned home to find her condo had become a veritable art installation of used condoms and human excrement. She later found evidence on Instagram that Jeffrey had advertised a wild party at her place to the general public. She also found pictures of the party herself that she probably wishes she could unsee. Jeffrey agreed to pay the cleaning bill, and Airbnb agreed to foot the damages—after some initial deception and confusion about what was covered by the host agreement, and after Business Insider put pressure on them by releasing the story.
In March 2014, comedian Ari Teman rented his apartment out to David Carter, who claimed he needed a place for his family to stay for a wedding. Carter then took to Twitter to advertise a sex party, charging $20 a head for entry. Carter denies wrongdoing—he claims that the entire thing was made up by Teman for attention—but Teman certainly isn't any better off for it. A court case from his landlord was dismissed, but Teman still found himself on a list of possible problem tenants, and he claims that he's been unable to find a home since, even when he offered to pay a year's rent up front.
Troy Dayton rented his home to people who turned out to be meth-addicted identity thieves. He discovered that his tenants had stolen his valuables, done thousands of dollars of damage to the home, and left drug paraphernalia everywhere. Moreover, his personal information was strewn about in a way that indicated it was copied. All that he asked from Airbnb—which again, didn't have a mechanism to deal with these kinds of complaints at the time—was $1,000 to cover the cost of the places he stayed while his home was uninhabitable, plus a replacement for his birth certificate which was stolen. He didn't seek damages, and there's no indication that they gave him any.
Cory Tschogl invested in a condo in Palm Springs and decided to rent it out. Maksym Pashanin needed long-term accommodation and rented the place from Tschogl for 44 days. After one month, Pashanin had complaints and demanded a full refund. When Tschogl worked with Airbnb to make the refund happen, Pashanin took the money and refused to leave. In spite of pleas from Tschogl and from Airbnb, Pashanin claimed that since he'd been there a month, he was protected by California law as a month-to-month tenant. Tschogl had to go through legal channels to get him evicted—a process that can take 3-6 months. After two months of media attention, Pashanin just sort of snuck out in the middle of the night. Tschogl says that the place isn't actually damaged in any way, beyond the taint of a profoundly weird situation. Airbnb has compensated Tschogl for the time that Pashanin squatted in her condo.
In September 2015, Megan Duma and her husband were relaxing in Canada when Megan got a concerned call from a neighbor about a party at her house. She called the police, but it was too late. By the time she came home, her house was a blood-covered horror show. A $20,000 work of art was destroyed, and tiles and glasses were broken. There were burns in her cabinets and lampshades along with blood and oil staining her furniture. Someone even ripped up her deck with a crowbar trying to get a cell phone they had dropped. Airbnb initially refused to pay, though they later settled for the complete damages.
In April 2015, Mark and Star King rented their two-story home in Calgary to four adults who said they were in town for a wedding. Neighbors tipped them off when they noticed over a hundred people and a party bus at the Kings' house. The Kings described condoms clogging toilets, barbecue sauce on the ceilings, and chicken meat in her shoes. Of course, that doesn't really do justice to the property damage. Omnipresent vomit ruined most of their belongings, broken glass carpeted the house, and their hardwood floors were ruined and buckling from pools of alcohol that had been soaking into them for days. The Kings ultimately said that they would have felt better if the house had simply been burned down, so they could start from scratch. As it stood, Airbnb put the Kings up in a hotel while biohazard specialists cleaned up drug paraphernalia and bodily fluids from the house.
In the summer of 2012, a pair of women in Stockholm rented their apartment out when they went on vacation for a month. They returned to find a notice in the mail from the police informing them that the apartment had been raided after two prostitutes were followed to the residence. The police didn't raid very thoroughly, however, because the owners found a plastic bag full of used condoms in their apartment. While there wasn't necessarily damage to the apartment, the "ick" factor was raised by the fact that the women would never have known had the police not raided the prostitutes.
In July 2014, Mike Novak rented his house in Hyattsville to two women who used it to host an enormous house party. Not only was his house trashed, several musical instruments destroyed, and his pool pump ruined, but when the party turned into a fight in his backyard, the "guests" broke through his neighbor's fence. Angry neighbors told Novak that around 100 people were in his house and that people were riding a motorcycle up and down his wheelchair ramp. Days later, he was finding lingerie in every room and using odor eliminator on everything.
The Stockholm case isn't the only prostitute-related snafu. Jessica Penzari thought she was renting her place on West 43rd to a woman in the Army who needed a place to hang before she shipped out. She was fairly surprised, then, when the NYPD called her to tell her that a prostitute had been stabbed at her apartment over a price dispute. She came home to find at least ten used condoms lying around. Airbnb changed her locks and cleaned out her place while putting her up at a hotel.
This is a big one. This was actually the origin of the Airbnb host guarantee and the inception of their "trust and safety team." In 2011, a blogger going by "EJ" described coming home to find her home completely ransacked. A locked closet had been broken into with her passport, cash, grandmother's jewelry, and a bounty of electronic devices stolen. Her birth certificate and social security card were laid out, and she believes they were photocopied. While the company did eventually compensate her, they also tried to pressure her into shutting down her blog.
