The San Francisco-based company is still in a hyper-growth stage, Jordan said in an interview on Thursday. Next year is probably too optimistic because management hasn’t prepared for a market debut and more time is needed to resolve regulatory hurdles, he said…

Airbnb, the company that lets people rent out their homes and rooms to strangers over the Internet, has a new message for its users. It’s not OK to reject potential guests because you’re uncomfortable with their race, religion or sexual orientation. The company says it’s making moves to stop or reduce discrimination. NPR’s Aarti Shahani […]

You may have heard recently that there’s a problem with racism on Airbnb. Screenshots of racist epithets, and other experiences collected under#AirbnbWhileBlack, have revealed a few of the platform’s hosts to be angry bigots. Beyond that, there is strong evidence that black guests are being rejected, because they are black, even by outwardly well-mannered hosts. A Harvard study from […]

After she visited Toronto in April 2014, the Airbnb host wrote, “Very clean tenants. The apartment was in an amazing condition! Highly would recommend them to other hosts.”…

NEW YORK — Accusations that Airbnb has been ignoring complaints of racism have led several black entrepreneurs to create two new vacation rental websites where they say racism will not be tolerated…

The sharing economy discriminates. Don’t believe me? Try renting a vacation home with young kids or a service animal. Or if you’re black. Greg Selden knows what that’s like. A talent agent from Richmond, Va., he says he recently asked about the availability of an Airbnb rental in Philadelphia, but the host told him it was already booked. Selden, who is African American, then created two fake accounts that featured photos of white people, and the accommodations became available. Selden is suing Airbnb for violating the Fair Housing Act and his civil rights. Airbnb spokesman Nick Papas says racial discrimination is “unacceptable and it flies in the face of our mission to bring people together.” Last week, Airbnb hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to help it create an anti-discrimination policy. Whether you’re a buyer or seller in the sharing economy, you know discrimination happens in big and small ways. Usually, it’s a little white lie, like claiming your unit isn’t available when an unwanted guest tries to book or bending a few facts to prod a problematic guest to book somewhere else. But Christine Karpinski, author of the book How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner, says, “everybody does it.” Question is, what can you do about it? If you think the vacation rental owner or Airbnb host is refusing to rent you an apartment or vacation home for discriminatory reasons, what are your options?…

As it is currently written, Airbnb’s anti-discrimination policy does not explicitly bar hosts from banning guests based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Instead, it defers to “local laws and regulations” and instructs hosts to “be familiar with the laws that apply to you and your listing.” Airbnb appears to act swiftly after incidents of anti-LGBT discrimination are brought to its attention, but the policy could apparently do much more to prevent them before they occur….

Airbnb knows it has a housing discrimination problem. The company has made that clear on Twitter, in the media, on stage at its OpenAir event, and, most recently, at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference. It says it has a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind. And when discrimination does occur on its platform — as it has dozens of times this year, the company is quick to tout its anti-discrimination policy as evidence of this. Yet a BuzzFeed News tour of the company’s registration process for new hosts reveals that policy is — at best — extremely difficult to find. At no point during Airbnb’s roughly15-minute, 24-part registration process does the company detail it, or even inform potential hosts of its existence….

A professional dominatrix says Airbnb suspended her account because of her job—even though she wasn’t using the app to do sex work. According to experts, this is completely legal….

As these discriminatory incidents
continue to happen across the country, many have begun to question if Airbnb’s case-by-case responses are good enough, or whether there’s more the room-sharing service could do to prevent discrimination. Because what happened to Fisher was anything but isolated.
In the past year, a gay couple in Galveston were kicked out of a woman’s home when she realized they were gay — after they had already settled in. A black man from Washington, D.C., sued Airbnb after a host denied him housing under his real profile — but accepted
him when he created a fake profile as a white man. And a transgender woman in Minneapolis was denied housing because of her gender identity. Both the transgender woman and black man claimed that Airbnb did nothing to help them. To top it off, three Harvard
researchers even provided statistical proof of what they called “widespread discrimination” on Airbnb: In a December study, they found people with black-sounding names such as Lakisha or Rasheed were 16 percent less likely to be accepted by Airbnb hosts than
your white-sounding Kristens and Brents. After enough backlash piled up, Airbnb announced last month the company was reviewing its discrimination policy, which requires hosts to abide by all federal, state and local anti-discrimination and civil rights laws….