Airbnb Banned, Then Reinstated, A Councilperson for a Nine-Year-Old Misdemeanor

Bethany Hallam was trying to book an Airbnb in Miami when she received a message from the rental property platform that she’d been banned because of a “criminal records match.”

“We’ve recently completed an evaluation of your Airbnb account, which included a consumer report generated using the Inflection SafeDecision API product offered by Inflection Risk Solutions, LLC.,” the message from Airbnb said. That report contained a criminal records match, and Airbnb would prevent her from booking or hosting on Airbnb, seemingly forever. “Due to this finding, we regret to inform you that you will not be able to host or book reservations on Airbnb.”

Hallam, who is an Allegheny County, Pennsylvania councilperson at-large, told Motherboard that she assumed the match was referring to a misdemeanor possession and DUI charge from nine years ago. 

“This whole process is neither fair nor right!” Hallam said. “One third of Americans have some sort of past criminal record. People with past convictions should be a protected class when it comes to this sort of discrimination.” 

The platform runs background checks on both hosts and guests, and what gets checked and when differs between the two. For guests, a background check is run by a third-party service within 10 days of the booking check-in, and hosts are checked after they create a listing. Everyone is checked against the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") list, and everyone within the United States is also run through “certain databases of public state and county criminal records as well as state and national sex offender registries,” according to Airbnb.

“Lesser crimes'' like disorderly conduct or marijuana possession won’t get you removed from the platform, according to Airbnb. Crimes like felony burglary or larceny, property damage, and fraud can result in “further review, removal, or ineligibility.” Murder, terrorism, rape and child molestation “may result” in permanent removal. 

Hallam tweeted the message she received from Airbnb, and it quickly went viral. An Airbnb support account replied and asked her to send them a direct message for help, which she did. “Next thing I know I had an email in my inbox saying my account was reinstated after an ‘evidence based appeals process,’” Hallam said.

A spokesperson for Airbnb told Motherboard: “We understand that there may be a number of reasons why someone may have a criminal conviction on their record, so we developed an evidence-based appeals process that takes into account the type of crime and evidence of rehabilitation when considering reinstatement. We’ve now reinstated Councilperson Hallam’s account based on this process. We appreciate her patience, and we hope to support her during her future travels.” 

Hallam told Motherboard that she sees these kind of collateral punishments—sometimes arriving years later—as one of the worst aspects of the criminal justice system. “This whole ordeal goes against what’s supposed to be one of the founding principles of this country: second chances!” she said. “Airbnb as a private business is allowed to create their own policies and procedures, but they need to apply whatever those policies and procedures are consistently and justly.” 

Airbnb has policies against discrimination, but has also been accused in the past of discriminating against sex workers and people with disabilities. It has also recently started cracking down on parties, and has started trying to predict if a house is being booked by someone who is likely to throw a party there.

This article is part of State of Surveillance, made possible with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. The series will explore the development, deployment, and effects of surveillance and its intersection with race and civil rights.