The Mercury News

Not clear Airbnb plan would have stopped the Orinda deaths

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It’s a shame that it took the fatal shootings of five people at a Halloween party in Orinda last week to wake up Airbnb to potential problems with its short-term rentals.

The question is what the online property booking firm plans to do about it. The answer should start with more vigilance — a lot more.

More than 100 people showed up for a party at a rental house that was supposed to be occupied by no more than 13. The house had been the subject of neighbor complaints earlier this year, and city officials had issued warnings to the property owner.

Yet no one stopped the booking last week. And when complaints started rolling in, Orinda police were slow to respond. This was a tragedy that should have been prevented.

There’s plenty of blame to go around: The renter who lied about the planned use. The property owner who failed to vet the renter. The police who took well over an hour to respond to neighbor complaints at an address that was already known to law enforcemen­t as a problem location.

And Airbnb.

To its credit, the company is now trying to be proactive. “We are banning ‘party houses’ and we are redoubling our efforts to combat unauthoriz­ed parties and get rid of abusive host and guest conduct, including conduct that leads to the terrible events we saw in Orinda,” CEO Brian Chesky announced Saturday on Twitter.

Chesky said the company will expand its manual screening of high-risk reservatio­ns flagged by the company’s riskdetect­ion technology; create a dedicated “party house” rapid response team; crack down more quickly on abusive renters; and initiate a “10 day sprint” to develop and implement the new measures.

OK, but it’s not at all clear any of that would have prevented last week’s tragedy. Large parties were already prohibited at the property.

If Airbnb, which did not respond to our request to discuss its new plans, is serious about cracking down, it should start with flagging and blocking problem listings, like the one in Orinda. For that, Airbnb needs an open and direct line of communicat­ion with the cities.

San Francisco has imposed registrati­on rules on rental properties that have led to coordinati­on between that city and the company. But Airbnb has no communicat­ion with cities like Orinda, which also has a short-term occupancy ordinance.

It should, starting with a violations hotline that cities can use to report problems. Had Airbnb known about the troubled history of the Orinda property, it could have flagged the last week’s rental more carefully.

Maybe that would have been enough to save five lives.

 ?? BAY AREA NEWS GROUP FILE PHOTO ?? A Contra Costa County sheriff’s search and rescue team gets ready Friday to search for evidence on the perimeter where a multiple shooting occurred in Orinda on Halloween night.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP FILE PHOTO A Contra Costa County sheriff’s search and rescue team gets ready Friday to search for evidence on the perimeter where a multiple shooting occurred in Orinda on Halloween night.

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