Airbnb Puts $500 Million Behind 1 Million Free Crisis Nights a Year

Airbnb will channel $500 million into its nonprofit, Airbnb.org, over the next five years — enough to fund 1 million free nights of emergency housing every year. Ten cents from every booking on the platform will go toward the program, the company announced.

The math works because of scale. Airbnb booked 57 million stays and experiences in 2025, so those dimes add up fast, supplemented by direct donations. Guests in crisis stay for free; hosts get paid, though they can discount their rates.

Why did Airbnb formalize its crisis housing operation?

Demand forced the issue. "We were just getting a huge amount of demand," Brian Chesky, Airbnb's cofounder and CEO, told Fast Company. Airbnb launched Open Homes informally after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when a New York City host asked about helping displaced residents. It formalized Airbnb.org as an independent nonprofit in 2020. This year, the organization is responding to a disaster a day — up from eight crises globally in 2023, including the Maui wildfire and the Turkey earthquake, to more than 200 already this year.

To date, Airbnb.org has provided free stays to 250,000 people, with an expanded mandate covering displacement from disasters such as the war in Ukraine and Florida hurricanes, travel for medical care, shelter from domestic violence, and support for veterans.

What drives Chesky personally?

His mother's illness. After her breast cancer diagnosis in 2011, she took a daily train from Albany to New York City — a 300-mile round trip — for treatment. "She met other people on the train, and they were going back and forth for medical treatment," Chesky said. "They couldn't afford to stay overnight. That made us realize, wow, there's a lot of need out there."

The commitment is built to outlast the five-year funding window. "We're not going to house everyone, but we felt like we finally got to the place where we had the operational capacity to make a giant commitment," Chesky said. "We hope to do this for as long as Airbnb exists."

How did the Los Angeles wildfires test the model?

Fast and at scale. Maribel Marin, executive director of the social services nonprofit 211 LA, partnered with Airbnb.org on January 7, 2025, initially agreeing to house 100 households as fires broke out across Los Angeles County. "Within 10 days, we had 10,000 households [in need]," Marin recalled. Around 100,000 Angelenos evacuated in total.

The two organizations ultimately covered 78,000 nights of free housing and have since signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in future disasters. Chesky personally donated $6 million for emergency housing in L.A., and Airbnb.org donated more than $24 million to 211 LA, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, and other local groups.

Host Susan Bailey, who has hosted crisis families since Airbnb called her on a Thursday night in 2017 about an Iraqi refugee family arriving at midnight, welcomed an Altadena couple with a toddler fleeing the Eaton fire. "Pretty soon neighbors were leaving lasagna on their porch," she said.

What about the price-gouging lawsuit?

The goodwill campaign unfolds against legal friction. Last summer, the City of Los Angeles sued Airbnb, accusing it of price gouging during the January 2025 wildfires. The City Attorney's complaint alleges Airbnb "set and advertised unlawfully high prices and/or charged unlawfully high rents for potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of rental properties" during the emergency declaration. California law caps price increases at 10% during a state of emergency. In June, a judge ruled the suit can proceed. "We continue to dispute the inaccurate allegations in the City Attorney's lawsuit," Airbnb said in a statement.

Chesky argues the platform's limits are structural. "The nature of a model is we'll never be able to prevent everything, because we don't control the home, we don't control the price," he said. Airbnb says it sent error messages to hosts inflating prices by more than 10% after the emergency declaration.

Can a rental platform teach Silicon Valley philanthropy?

Christoph Gorder, Airbnb.org's executive director, thinks so. "It's a really natural instinct for people to want to help other people when they're in crisis. We didn't invent that," he said. "What we're doing is bringing technology to be able to scale that at a global level." He cites growing uptake in smaller regional disasters, where rural Airbnbs are often the only option beyond hotels.

Chesky's advice to the AI-fortune foundations now reshaping philanthropy: lean on what you already do well. "A company should ask, what are their natural superpowers?" he said. "Ideally, your philanthropic arm is connected to what you're competent in, and we are pretty competent in housing people." Airbnb.org marks the shift tonight with its first-ever gala in Los Angeles, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and catered by José Andrés of World Central Kitchen.