Texans turn to Airbnb to directly help Ukrainians impacted by war
Three nights ago, an idea came to Nicolette Solomon-van Wyk that she could use the vacation rental platform Airbnb to provide a moral and financial boost to people possibly suffering in Ukraine.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — People living in Central Texas found an unlikely way to both send support to Ukrainians and counter the Russian propaganda and disinformation circulating about the ongoing war.
Three nights ago, an idea came to Nicolette Solomon-van Wyk that she could use the vacation rental platform Airbnb to provide a moral and financial boost to people possibly suffering in Ukraine. She suggested that she and her neighbors could offer help by booking rooms and houses from Ukrainian Airbnb hosts so that they could receive money directly.
"I thought what if we ask people to book in Ukraine even though we're not going?" Solomon-van Wyk said. "First of all, they'll have income, even if their houses have been bombed or whatever, and secondly to provide space for people who need a place to go and stay to recuperate to the fleeing people."
Solomon-van Wyk rents a property in Dripping Springs on Airbnb and is known as a "superhost," which is a distinction for property owners who are the most experienced and top-rated. She said she reached out and asked Airbnb to drop all fees for Ukrainian rentals, and the company announced it would waive those for guests and hosts.
"If everybody just helped a little bit, what a fantastic thing for the Ukrainian people to know that we are here thinking of them, trying to support them even though we don't know how to stop the war," Solomon-van Wyk said.
If people search for vacation rentals in Ukraine right now on the Airbnb website and app, they can find them listed for prices as low as $10 per night. Solomon-van Wyk shared with her friends on Facebook that she booked three nights at places in Kyiv and asked others to do the same. "Please join me in this act of charity and support," her post Tuesday night read.
One of her friends who's another Airbnb host in Dripping Springs, Carrie Napiorkowski, said she already spent several hundred dollars booking rentals in Ukraine. She paired her bookings with messages sent directly to those Ukrainian hosts.
"We will not be coming," one of Napiorkowski's messages read, "but we want you to know that the people of Texas are praying for the Ukrainian people."
She received a response from one woman with a property outside Kyiv, who explained she opened her Airbnb to 38 refugees, including 18 children, fleeing the city.
"She's feeding them. She's addressing medical needs, diapers, doing everything they possibly can," Napiorkowski said. "The issue is right now, though, she said they're literally running out of food."
Additionally, Napiorkowski said she decided to search for Airbnb rentals in Russia and send information to about a dozen random hosts there about what's being reported about the war in Ukraine. She hopes doing this will help combat the disinformation fed by Russia's government and perhaps turn public sentiment against Vladimir Putin.
"I don't think the Russian people are bad at all. They're good people, and I think if they knew the truth, you would have more people going to the streets and having an uprising," Napiorkowski said. "I personally feel that the only way we're going to stop Putin is by the Russian people themselves."
It's unclear, though, whether messaging with Russian Airbnb hosts will be allowed to continue because the company's CEO, Brian Chesky, tweeted Thursday night that all operations in Russia and Belarus are now suspended.
Airbnb responded Friday to what Texans are doing to support Ukrainians through its app. "We are so humbled by the inspiring generosity of our community during this moment of crisis," spokesperson Liz DeBold Fusco said in a statement.
The company already pledged that it would help to find free temporary housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. Airbnb also launched a webpage dedicated strictly to assisting Ukraine, which the company said has had more than 357,000 visitors to this page alone.
The number of refugees who have fled Ukraine has now reached 1.2 million, the International Organization for Migration said Friday. This could become the “biggest refugee crisis this century,” the U.N. has said, predicting that as many as 4 million people could leave.