Looking for guidance

[Linda3682]

Hi. We are fairly new hosts, and have had a few challenges so far.

Our home is a shared living space where we rent 3 bedrooms . We have a new guest that just checked in Saturday. When messaging with him before the reservation was made, he said he walked with a cane and was retired. We told him about the steps to enter, and he assured us that would be fine. Well, when he arrived, he had difficulty getting into the house, but was also exhausted.

His first full day there we received messages from the other guests about urine under the kitchen chair he was sitting in and fell asleep. One of the guests noticed it afterwards and cleaned it up. Another guest messaged us about the room this gentleman is staying in smelled like urine and a nursing home when he opened the door. He also was using a walker instead of a cane. I have tried reaching him to see how things are going from his perspective, but his phone has been busy each time.

I am planning on going there today to talk with him. Our concerns are that he is not really able to take care of himself and is not safe. I am an occupational therapist and so this is something I am familiar with. I’m just not familiar with what our jobs as a host would be in a situation like this. He has the room reserved for 3 stays due to us already having reservations for a few weekends already . The first stay is for 19 days.

Has anyone else ever had a similar situation? And if so, how did you handle it?

Thank you! 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@Linda3682   Oh dear, I'm afraid you've really jumped straight into the deep end here, with a small pile-up of several complicating factors on top of the current guest's health and mobility issues:

1) Multiple guest parties sharing common living space 

2) Getting stuck with a long-stay booking

3) Multiple upcoming bookings confirmed for an untested guest

On point (1): is there a host resident in the house to attend to cleaning and safety issues that come up? If not, this arrangement is frankly doomed. You simply can't guarantee a clean, safe, and comfortable environment to any guest while putting one or more other strangers in their living space unsupervised. But if a host is in the home regularly every day and attending to the common areas, an occasional slip-up is forgivable. The guests just need to know that they're not on their own if an issue comes up with another guest. 

On (2), I can't recommend Airbnb for long stays in general, and Airbnb doesn't allow hosts to charge security deposits. If you're looking for 30+ day bookings, don't do them on this site. With Airbnb, stick to a short maximum stay (e.g. 1 or 2 weeks) until you find your feet.

(3) always a terrible idea. If you get a request from someone interested in multiple stays, only confirm the first one, and wait until the stay has concluded to decide whether you're comfortable re-booking them. Obviously now you see why.

As far as how to deal with this specific guest, that's a tough one Airbnb is very touchy when it comes to disabilities and discrimination, and they tend to overcorrect, so I'm not sure you'll be able to find anyone in the outsourced and incompetent customer support who will be able to comprehend the complexities of the situation and terminate the remaining bookings without penalties. But this stay is presenting a safety risk for the guest himself, and making the home unsanitary for your other guests, so it really doesn't sound tenable to continue. I would do everything possible here to get this guest to agree to advance the checkout date, refund the remaining days of the current stay, and help him find a more appropriate place to relocate. Then, given the circumstances, I'd ask Airbnb to do a penalty-free back-end cancellation based on changes to the guest's mobility requirements so that he's able to get a full refund of service fees and you're able to get replacement bookings.

[Linda3682]

Thank you Andrew for such a thorough and understanding response. Great points. I lucked out yesterday by being there when the guest’s social worker was there. She is going to try to find a more appropriate setting for him. 🙏