Skift Take
Airbnb is finally trying to meet lawmakers and housing advocates in the middle, but it's unclear if it's willing to provide cities enough access to its data to know if the proposed guidelines will be met.
Today, Airbnb made an unprecedented policy announcement: It will ban Airbnb hosts with multiple listings in the cities of San Francisco and New York.
Both cities have been battlegrounds for the San Francisco-based home sharing platform and commercial operators, hosts who often manage multiple listings, have been a particular point of contention for Airbnb, lawmakers, and housing advocates.
The "one host, one home" policy has been something Airbnb has said it has implemented and attempted in New York since June 1 of this year but, as of Nov. 1, the company says its technology platform will now be able to prohibit a single individual within the five boroughs of New York from having multiple listings.
In a press call, Airbnb global head of policy, Chris Lehane, didn't divulge any specifics as to exactly how the platform would be able to distinguish multiple listings from the same host, but he said, "In layman's terms, the engineering only allows you to list one home with one address in a place like New York City."
Airbnb is also proposing a "simple, mandatory registration" system f
