Refugees find temporary havens on Airbnb

Sefani Tadesse got the heads-up at dinnertime. Five Airbnb guests would arrive at midnight.

Tadesse and her daughter Bella, 13, rushed to clean their Oakland condo, washing towels, making the beds, buying flowers — and packing their own bags, because they vacate their one-bedroom place and stay with Tadesse’s parents in San Leandro when they host via Airbnb.

The guests were exhausted and disoriented when they arrived after a 16-hour flight. These were no ordinary tourists, but refugees from Afghanistan. They came via a new program from the home-stay website that encourages hosts to provide free temporary housing to people uprooted by violence, persecution, terrorism and natural disasters.

Since then, Tadesse has hosted a refugee family from Eritrea — the same country her parents fled in the 1980s during its war with Ethiopia. That background is one reason she readily agreed to participate in Airbnb’s new program for hosts to volunteer their spaces as temporary landing places for refugees.

“As soon as I heard about it, I said, ‘I’m in,’” she said. “It instantly hit home because I know the struggle my parents endured to escape war and seek a better life.”

Airbnb is aiming to help temporarily house 100,000 refugees over the next five years via a new site called Open Homes that lets anyone sign up to offer free short-term space. It’s partnered with resettlement agencies so case managers can log on, see what housing is available and book it.

The idea bubbled up from Airbnb’s host community, according to Kim Rubey, Airbnb’s director of social good. After 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, hosts wanted to house stranded people, but the site lacked a way to offer no-cost housing.

“Everyone realized immediately that this was a total no-brainer,” Rubey said. “Engineers worked around the clock to re-architect the payment system so hosts could offer their listings for free for a discrete period of time.” Airbnb has since offered the Disaster Response Tool for dozens of emergencies, housing people displaced by the London Grenfell Tower fire and family members of Orlando nightclub shooting victims, for instance.

Now Airbnb is expanding the program in response to the global refugee crisis of 65 million displaced people worldwide. Some 6,000 hosts globally have volunteered, about a third of them in the U.S., including 75 in San Francisco, 41 in the East Bay and 48 in the South Bay, the company said. That’s a modest sliver of Airbnb’s 3 million-plus hosts worldwide, and includes some who joined just to host refugees.

“Hosts who are new to Airbnb and some that haven’t even traveled on Airbnb have signed up to open their homes,” Rubey said.

The International Rescue Committee, which helps resettle more than 10,000 families a year in the United States, is working with Airbnb on the program. The U.S. currently admits 110,000 refugees a year, a number expected to plunge by half under the Trump administration. But the Airbnb program helps with temporary housing all over the world, as many refugees go to Europe, Canada and other countries.

For most refugees, workers know of their arrival a few weeks ahead and can line up permanent housing, said Karen Ferguson, executive director of the rescue committee’s Northern California branch. But about 10 percent of the time, there are hiccups — either the refugees arrive with almost no notice, or finding suitable housing takes longer.

“In those situations, we need a stopgap measure, which in the past has unfortunately always been a motel,” she said. That’s far from ideal: tight quarters that lack privacy and feel institutional.

“These are vulnerable individuals having to make incredible adjustments,” Ferguson said. “We try very hard to give them a sense of immediate privacy and independence.”

For the Eritrean family members hosted by Tadesse, spending two weeks in her Grand Avenue condo when they first arrived in the U.S. in April was a blessing. They had spent years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, where they made bricks from mud and straw to build their own one-room shelter, doing their cooking outside.

The Oakland Airbnb “was a good place, especially because we could cook our own meals,” said Efrem Asefaw, 42, speaking in Tigrinya through an interpreter. “We really appreciated what the host did for us.”

Tadesse, a recruiter for a nonprofit, speaks some Tigrinya, so she was able to offer the family shahee (tea), for instance. It was an extra relief to meet someone connected to their home country, Efrem said. (Eritrean people formally use first names).

Efrem’s wife, Roza Menges, 35, was particularly touched that Tadesse brought them food and toiletries, and stopped in to change the flowers for fresh ones.

By contrast, some refugee friends of the family initially stayed in a motel. They had to hush their children to avoid complaints from neighboring guests and eat unfamiliar take-out food, Efrem said. “That was very stressful for them,” he said.

Now the family of five, which includes daughters Delina, 11, and Betal, 5, and son Yafet, 2, has moved into longer-term housing in a modest three-bedroom apartment in Oakland’s Fruitvale district. Spotlessly clean, it’s outfitted with donated furniture, kitchen supplies and a few toys. The only personal touches are a crucifix and a religious wall hanging. Once he learns a little more English, Efrem hopes to find work as a truck driver, something he did in Eritrea.

The family’s resettlement caseworker, Petros Embaye, said he readily sees the difference for those who initially land in an Airbnb space versus a hotel.

“It makes them feel like they are home,” he said. “People can come and visit, they can cook their own food, and their kids have more space to play.”

Airbnb does not charge a fee on the free transactions; it otherwise gets about a 12 percent cut of paid rentals. But the hosts make a much bigger donation by foregoing income they’d otherwise get from travelers.

Airbnb critics pointed to that imbalance. “I think the people who take on the refugees are doing a good humanitarian act, but Airbnb’s involvement sounds like a publicity stunt,” said Jennifer Fieber, political campaign director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. Her group and other housing activists say the home-rentals site diverts much-needed permanent housing from the market.

Tadesse’s Lake Merritt condo usually brings in between $200 and $250 a night, a big help for the single mom in offsetting her housing expenses, she said. She has hosted about a dozen times over the past year, each time decamping to her parents’ house.

She’s looking forward to hosting more refugees. Her condo is just a block from the International Rescue Committee’s offices, making it convenient for families to walk there to meet with their caseworker or review paperwork.

“These people are coming here with nothing but the clothes on their back,” Tadesse said. “This is a way to really make a difference in their lives.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid