Brian Chesky’s $500M Airbnb.org Housing Plan, Explained

Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s co-founder and CEO, is opening the company’s doors to people in crisis through a funding plan meant to provide $500 million to Airbnb.org over five years. The commitment ties contributions to stays booked through his travel platform. But concerns remain about its impact on the country’s housing shortage.

The travel company announced the plan Oct. 28 and will donate 10 cents from its revenue for each completed stay to Airbnb.org, the independent nonprofit it founded in 2020. The donation will not increase what guests pay or reduce what hosts receive, the company said.

The $500 million funding total includes cash and in-kind contributions, plus additional support from Airbnb and other donors. Canceled stays, experiences and services do not trigger the 10-cent donation. The company covers operating costs; Airbnb.org provides housing credits, guests stay free and hosts get paid.

Chesky separately pledged $100 million personally for San Francisco parks on Nov. 9. That gift is distinct from Airbnb.org’s five-year housing funding plan.

Airbnb’s growth and the housing fight

The company reported on Nov. 5 that revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30 increased 19 percent year over year to $4.9 billion. The company also announced that it would introduce an A.I. travel agent during the first half of next year to help guests “explore options, make decisions with the people they’re traveling with and take action directly.”

And last month, the company announced new rules limiting checkout chores like washing and putting away dishes or removing sheets from a bed. The policy takes effect on Nov. 20 and still permits requests such as putting dishes in the sink or gathering used towels. The announcement sparked applause from consumers and boos from hosts.

The company still faces a lawsuit over alleged price gouging and ongoing criticism from activists who say it contributes to a lack of affordable housing.

The pledge is “for them a cost of trying to distract people from the bigger issue, which is the housing crisis,” Murray Cox, a critic of the company and founder of Inside Airbnb, an organization that highlights its impact on residential neighborhoods, tells Observer.

In recent years, places including Los Angeles County, New York, Barcelona and Vancouver have restricted short-term rentals amid concerns about housing affordability.

In 2025, the home-sharing company expanded its services and relaunched experiences like personal meals made by a Michelin-star chef and a tour of the Notre-Dame cathedral.

The company’s shares climbed about 12 percent Nov. 6 after it raised its full-year revenue growth forecast.

Deutsche Bank analyst Benjamin Black cited “Airbnb’s improving core growth, differentiated supply, capital-light model and expanding product roadmap supporting sustained share gains” in a Nov. 6 note, according to TheStreet’s account of his analysis.

But the company also faces a Los Angeles lawsuit alleging that it illegally increased rental prices on at least 2,600 properties after last year’s California wildfires. The complaint alleges that prices on affected listings rose by more than 10 percent between Jan. 7 and Jan. 17, 2025, after the emergency declaration triggered California’s price-gouging protections. A judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed in June. That procedural ruling did not establish liability.

“It’s horrible when companies take advantage of some kind of natural disaster or some kind of emergency,” Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director at the advocacy group U.S. PIRG Education Fund, tells Observer. “We have seen this in the past, where people will try to price gouge. For example, for infant formula, back when we had a shortage of infant formula because of contamination.”

Airbnb did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokesperson disputed the lawsuit’s allegations in a June 30 Reuters report.

The company also spent more than $6 million backing candidates in Los Angeles’ mayoral and city attorney races, LAist reported on Nov. 5. Its preferred mayoral candidate conceded, while its preferred city attorney candidate trailed by almost 2-to-1. The results threatened Airbnb’s push to expand short-term rentals ahead of the 2028 Olympics.

The promise and the pushback

The company stated that the $500 million will help Airbnb.org reach its goal of providing one million nights of free housing annually by 2030 and expand support for families traveling for medical care and survivors fleeing domestic violence and exploitation.

On Nov. 10, Airbnb.org announced partnerships for military families with Fisher House Foundation, Operation Healing Forces and Dream Foundation. Ken Fisher, Fisher House Foundation’s chairman and CEO, said in the announcement that the partnership would help families stay together through extended medical treatment.

“Every time someone books a home on Airbnb, they’ll help someone else find a place to stay when they need it most. That’s Airbnb at its best,” Chesky stated in the company’s Oct. 28 announcement.

Chesky announced the commitment at Airbnb.org’s first gala on Oct. 28, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and featuring Charlize Theron and Charli XCX.

“What Airbnb.org does sounds simple,” Theron said at the event. “It gives someone a place to stay, but if you’ve ever sat down with a survivor of domestic violence, you’ll know that somewhere to stay isn’t just a small thing; it’s actually everything.”

Still, Cox questions the company’s motives and level of commitment. He argues that $500 million over five years is a relatively small donation for a company of Airbnb’s scale. He also says the company continues to fight cities’ restrictions on short-term rentals, which make housing less affordable.

“They are just continuing business as usual when they are using the profits from taking away housing to provide some small benefits here and there so that they can put a good face on their business,” Cox says.

Chesky has denied that Airbnb is the reason cities are expensive and that it’s trying to make up for harms it has caused through charitable giving. He acknowledged to the Associated Press in an Oct. 29 report that some hosts take a small fraction of their area’s housing off the market.

“I don’t like this idea that somehow you create a nonprofit to make up for or apologize for your core business,” Chesky told the Associated Press. “Our core business, independently, is gonna affect a lot more lives than this organization. And our core business needs to be responsible. And if we’re doing something that’s not responsible, we need to correct it.”