[ssijak]

Why have not you done that before for existing homeless people or other people in need? This just smells like ugly marketing scheme.

I mean, it is good if someone in need is helped, but why now and why that wording and scope to only refugees?

[ivan_gammel]

That's dumb argument, sorry. Disaster relief is temporary and help is provided to people who suffer from external circumstances. Housing for homeless is a daily job for the government and it is different, significantly bigger problem, for which the solution is not affordable for any single private organization or person. Private organizations have limited resources and they have the right to choose whom to support first. Moreover, here the main support comes not from Airbnb, but from the hosts who offer their houses for free. Airbnb contribution here is to provide a web service for hosts and people in the need and not to take money for that.

[bogomipz]

No its not a "dumb argument". Homelessness is just as much of a humanitarian crisis. It's just nowhere nears as large a part of the news cycle.

>"Disaster relief is temporary and help is provided to people who suffer from external circumstances"

Refugee resettlement is a significant undertaking that often involves a year or more of living in transition. This isn't "disaster relief" in the sense that there was a flood or an earthquake and until the town can be rebuilt people are displaced. The refugees are people from Somalia, Iraq Eritrea and Afghanistan as well. They are fleeing war and oppression there as well. And sadly the situation isn't going to change in any of these places. To call it temporary is inaccurate. These disasters have endured now for the last 15 years.

>"Housing for homeless is a daily job for the government and it is different"

Except that much like the refugee crisis the help from governments isn't fixing the problem.

[ivan_gammel]

>No its not a "dumb argument".

It's dumb because it judges private business on how it spends its resources on charity. It's also dumb because it suggests that some people are better then others and deserve the help more.

>Homelessness is just as much of a humanitarian crisis.

Homelessness is not an acute crisis, which happens and develops as quickly as execution of order of insane U.S. president. It's a problem that can and should be successfully addressed by the government by variety of means, because homelessness is fully under the control of the government (which can offer rehabilitation, medical treatment, shelters and assistance with finding jobs to homeless and social aid to people who may become homeless otherwise), while the causes forcing people to run from their homes in other countries are not.

Here is offered not the permanent settlement of refugees (for 10-15 years): there's probably no host in the world willing to give their property to a family of strangers for that long. It's a relief: the measure signed by Trump is sudden, it has limited period of action and could possibly be repealed, but now many people are stuck in limbo and have to change their plans and make a lot of decisions about their life in next few months. Easing it for them by giving a place to stay is one of the ways to help, so why not?

>Except that much like the refugee crisis the help from governments isn't fixing the problem. Statistics show that governments can be pretty effective in solving these problems and U.S. government is quite good in that sense, as I can see.

[bogomipz]

>Homelessness is not an acute crisis, which happens and develops as quickly as execution of order of insane U.S. president."

Homelessness is not acute? I think you not be using that word correctly. For people living paycheck to paycheck they are often one check away from being homeless. It can happen overnight!

[ivan_gammel]

I know what is it and yes, it is neither a crisis, nor it's acute problem that should be invoked as an argument against helping others. If you are poor in developed country, you will not starve to death, you will not be tortured and you will not die from air strike or accidental bullet just to be called "inevitable collateral damage". Your life is hard, but you are not in grave danger like people fleeing from a civil war or dictatorship. There are already plenty of charities and government programs that will help you.

[bogomipz]

>"I know what is it and yes, it is neither a crisis,"

Wow, homelessness is not a crisis? Can I ask where you live? Maybe you should take a stroll through the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles, or underneath the I-5 in Seattle. Then proclaim its not crisis. It's a huge crisis and I find it bizarre that you are trivializing it.

And yes, they do die, they die all the time. They die from heart diseases and diabetes and AIDs and drug overdoes. They die because they have no medical attention.

Just because there isn't a dictator involved or 24 hours cable news coverage does not mean it is any less of a crisis or there is any less suffering.

[syshum]

Governments have, and should have, limited resources as well. Where do you think the government obtains its resources..

From private organizations and individuals. Thus if the problem is to large for Private Organizations and Individuals to handle collectively, then it is to hard for government as well

Housing for Homeless is also a job the government continually fails at and is infact today primary provided for by private organizations using money donated by private organizations and individuals (at least in the US)

[GavinMcG]

> Thus if the problem is to large for Private Organizations and Individuals to handle collectively, then it is to hard for government as well

While that's a trivial tautology, in that the government is the mechanism by which a society acts collectively, it's utterly false in the way that you meant it. Government can coordinate resource deployment more effectively than a hodgepodge of private organizations.

> Housing for Homeless is also a job the government continually fails at and is infact today primary provided for by private organizations using money donated by private organizations and individuals

Fails at how? The (few) governments that are genuinely pursuing housing the homeless seem to be doing a fine job at it. The ones that are trying to get away with lip service to the idea are, well, getting away with it.

[syshum]

>>Government can coordinate resource deployment more effectively

While it is possible for the government do accomplish this in theory, it fails more often than not. Taking in huge amounts of resources including money and wasting them with inefficient bureaucracy and corruption as you have proven with the rest of your comment

[ivan_gammel]

It's indeed hard, but it's exactly one of the purposes the government exists for. It's their job which they have to do to justify their existence. You cannot blame any private for-profit organization for not taking the government's job and spending its money for something else.

[syshum]

I dont believe at any point I blamed any private for-profit organization for anything

I was taking issue with the assertions that government is the sole, best or even most competent venue to address a social problem like homelessness. I was taking issue the the assertion that government somehow has more resources than the Collective Individuals and Businesses it derives its resources from

[ivan_gammel]

It is appointed to be the best and most competent venue to address problems like that. Government is the way "collective individuals and businesses" solve the problems that impact the whole society. Replacing it with something else is appointing yet another government, which will require yet another form of legislation (because there have to be the rules), yet another form of taxation and tax collection (because it will need the money) among many other things necessary for successful governing organization.

[syshum]

>>It is appointed to be the best and most competent venue to address problems like that. Government is the way "collective individuals and businesses" solve the problems that impact the whole society.

I do not believe that should be the function of government, nor that is was "appointed" to do any such thing.

The role of government is protect the negative rights of individuals, government "is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all." -- Frédéric Bastiat

[ssijak]

Well, US gov (Clinton and Obama) created this refugees in the first place. They are all coming from the areas that this administrations ruined in one way or another.

[ivan_gammel]

That's a good reason, why US government and taxpayers, not individual corporate entities, should take responsibility and handle this systematically instead of banning the entry.

(btw, somehow you forgot Bush with Iraq and Afghanistan)

[sumedh]

> They are all coming from the areas that this administrations ruined

You do realize that this started when US under Bush invaded a country which had nothing to do with 9/11.

[vacri]

You might want to scroll back your timeline a bit. It was Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003 that created these refugees. Expensive bit of election-securing that.

[languagewars]

So all US exports should be subject to a 20% tax to make the world great again, right?

[devb]

There's a small eight year gap in your list there.

[ssijak]

yeah I forgot him, just wanted to say that it is not new politics or just Obama but many recent presidents

[Dorothy1989]

It is sade that comments like yours get downvoted. It seems noone here in HN wants to listen to the truth. Perhaps they are ignorant or conscientiously aware of what the States has done to Syria and want to muffle the truth. Reality hurts, does it?

[sumedh]

The reason that comment was down voted was because he/she conveniently ignored that US under Bush invaded a country which had nothing to do with 9/11.

[beisner]

I don't think you're giving them enough credit here. I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning). Sure, it would be great if they had thought about this earlier or created a broader program. But you could say the same thing about the public - why only now do we, individual citizens, care enough to act and speak out? Sometimes it takes an action close to home to scare us out of inaction. Companies - even unicorns - are made of people, and those people are just as susceptible to social pressure and zeitgeist as the rest of us.

[exolymph]

> I'd wager that a lot of these recently-announced initiatives have strong grass-roots origins, meaning that employee sentiment was the primary motivator (rather than PR bandwagoning).

Why not both?

[detaro]

> other people in need

they have done that before, e.g. during hurricane Mathew. "Airbnb is brokering free housing" probably would be a more accurate phrasing, since it is obviously the hosts providing the housing. Airbnb just provides their platform for free.

[PeterisP]

Quantity of people and the time involved.

This case is temporary, and hopefully short term - homeless people need a permanent, long term solution. Furthermore, for people like legal US residents who are temporarily locked away from their home, shelter generally solves their problems as they need just shelter; while for homeless people it wouldn't solve their root cause of homelessness which generally comes out to either unemployability, addictions or mental illness.

This case also involves much, much less people that the homeless population. In essence, they're choosing to help a smaller problem where they could make a difference instead of a much larger issue that's intractable by those means.