Airbnb to provide emergency accommodation
The Victorian government is to partner with Airbnb to offer short-term housing during emergencies.
Under the partnership, the Airbnb website would be used to match people in need of accommodation during a crisis with people willing to offer help at a low cost or for free.
The head of Airbnb Australia, Sam McDonough said, “The genesis of this initiative came in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the United States. Our community wanted to help, so we quickly re-engineered our website so that 1400 Airbnb hosts could open their homes for free.”
Victoria’s emergency services commissioner Craig Lapsley said, “It’s an opportunity for us to fill a gap that we’ve identified before, where we’ve actually had the goodwill of Victorians [that] offer up their places of accommodation and we’ve struggled to have a timely way to connect community needs to those.”
Mr McDonough said,”Since 2013, we’ve activated the initiative in San Diego, in response to major fires, in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, London and Sardinia, and Colorado, in relation to serious flooding.”
The arrangements would be in place before the coming fire season.
