4. The Kidnapping
This one is straight out of a Law & Order episode. According to the New York Times, on the evening of July 4, 2015, Jacob Lopez called his mother to claim that his Airbnb host was holding him hostage. Lopez claimed the host locked him in a room, stole the key and then proceeded to taunt him, “rattling knives around in the kitchen drawer and pressing him to submit to a sexual act.” When Lopez’s mother called Airbnb to get the address, they stonewalled her, giving her the number for the local police — a number which didn’t work — and then forwarding her calls directly to voicemail thereafter. Unfortunately (and obviously), help didn’t come in time. Lopez eventually convinced his captor to release him, but not before being sexually assaulted. Said an Airbnb spokesman in an email, “We realize we can learn a lot from this incident and we can do better … We are clarifying our policies so that our team will always contact law enforcement if we are made aware of an emergency situation in progress. Safety is our No. 1 priority, and we want to get our hosts and guests as much help as possible.”
5. The Working Girl
Okay, so technically this one wasn’t an Airbnb rental, though the arrangement began there. After being contacted by a young woman looking for a rental, a homeowner decided to rent her property for two nights. Unfortunately, she chose not to go through Airbnb for the process. Anyway, the renter took her brief ownership of the property. Soon after she left, though, the homeowner started getting calls from worried neighbors who were a little vexed at the constant stream of men entering and leaving the home. Yep, you guessed it; the woman had rented out the home in order to host a string of johns. The homeowner called repeatedly to ask the renter to leave, to no avail. However, shortly after returning home, the mystery woman took off.
6. The Neighbor Dispute
This one the owners may have brought on themselves … maybe. Here’s the deal: Michelle Huang and her boyfriend Thomas Payne own three apartments in a 6-room apartment building in San Francisco. Two of these three apartments were being used for Airbnb rentals. Okay, before we go further, you should know that there’s a dude named Sandeep Andre Hingorani who also lived in the building and hated both the turn-key service and the couple. Anyway, one day Huang and Payne rented out one of their apartments to one Jim Tako, even though his “Airbnb profile picture was of Don Johnson, circa-Miami Vice and did not have any reviews from other hosts or guests.” Anyway, Tako took up residence in the apartment for two months, only to reveal at the end of his tenure that Tako did not exist, he was in fact Hingorani (shock). And since he’d occupied the apartment for more than a month, he had the rights of a tenant and was entitled to stay. A court case is pending.
