What I learned sleeping in a tent, a boat, and a bunk bed, for way less than my actual rent.
Michelle Rial / BuzzFeed
Airbnb is transforming the way we rent. In San Francisco alone, over 5,000 houses, apartments — and, in some cases, tents — have been turned into temporary hotels. It's an especially controversial entity in San Francisco, where housing prices are skyrocketing, and where critics of the booking company say some people are using the platform as an unregulated rental market, pushing longtime residents out of the area.
But while some Airbnb hosts are renting their houses out full-time to wealthy vacationers and techies in town for the weekend, many aren't. It's still an open platform, which means anyone with space to spare can use it — not just those with exposed brick walls and hanging terrariums and sun-dappled white beds and couches with too many throw pillows. Anyone who's moved Airbnb's price slider all the way to the left, where prices hover around those of a burrito and a movie, knows that it's not all cool lofts with big windows in the Mission. We wanted to see what it was like to stay at the most inexpensive end of Airbnb — the kind of rentals that, if you stayed in them full-time, might cost less than your rent.
Spoiler: I didn't stay anywhere with succulents, hanging from the ceiling or otherwise.
The Shared Apartment ($20)
Air BnB
First up: crashing in someone else's shared space. This is the kind of arrangement that made Airbnb a hit; what it was best known for initially. But I feel like I'm intruding. This is clearly somebody's home. It smells noticeably unlike my apartment. Art and musical instruments line the walls, the fridge is stocked and covered in Post-Its — brief thank you notes from previous guests.
Three of us stayed there in all: The owner of the apartment, myself, and a tourist from New Zealand. There's only one bedroom. The tourist sleeps on a mattress in a doorless room — more just a section of the apartment than anything else — with a screen cordoning it off. The host isn't there when I arrive, so I spend most of the evening trying to figure out if I should sleep in the bedroom or on the couch. I don't know yet whether the she will be staying there, and besides it feels too personal to sleep in someone else's bed. The guy from New Zealand has no idea.
This is one way to rent out your place on Airbnb — effectively living with other roommates, who cycle in and out day-to-day. It feels overly intimate, and is likely more than a little inconvenient, but seems to be a popular option. This host's Airbnb listing is solidly booked for the next few weeks, and she says that it's not hard to find people to stay — there's always demand for a one- or two- night stay in the Bay Area on the cheap, and the apartment is a quick walk to BART.
It's an even quicker walk, though, to the Amtrak station, which I quickly realize is why the listing is so cheap. The host has a store of earplugs for those who can't sleep through the noise. I'm a heavy sleeper, but I consider taking her up on the offer. It's not so bad when the horn isn't blowing — then it's just a low rumble, a little quieter than a construction site would be, although construction tends to start early and end well before anyone is going to sleep. But when the conductor decides to blow the horn it is shocking, both in volume and in duration — it never seems to just go off once. Always, instead, in bursts, lasting minutes. It's impossible to predict which trains — they come, it seems, about 20 minutes apart — will blow the horn. While killing time waiting for someone to tell me whether to take the bed or the couch, I call a friend. She can't hear me when the trains are going by.
At about 9:30, after searching the apartment for clues as to where to sleep and becoming ambiently anxious about the whole situation (especially because this is my first-ever Airbnb booking) I text the host, "Do I sleep in the bedroom or on the couch?" wondering if it's a weird question to ask. "The bedroom," she replies after about 15 minutes, which I spent just sitting on the couch in the dark living room (I couldn't find the light switch and New Zealand had gone to sleep and I really didn't want to touch too many things). I took the bedroom, not really caring that the door didn't lock.
I write a Post-It when I leave, trying not to wake the host, who's asleep on the couch as I leave for work in the morning.
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