Does Airbnb drive up crime in London? That’s the question posed of the world’s most successful short-term rental service in new research by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology. The UK’s holiday rental market is enormous, projected to reach £3.5 billion this year. Airbnb eats up a sizeable chunk of that revenue; millions on the move take advantage of what the platform has to offer in the nation’s capital. And surely where there’s brass there’s muck?
Well, sort of. The research claimed a ‘positive association’ between areas of London where there were high levels of Airbnb and increased criminality. Looking at data from 2015 onwards, they suggested that a 10 per cent increase in Airbnbs in an area of the capital could lead to an additional 1,000 crimes a year, including robberies, burglaries and violence.
Several reasons were suggested for this, including Airbnb guests being easy targets in unfamiliar areas and the fact that homes obviously vacant for long periods as holiday lets were more likely targets for burglary. There was no clear evidence that users of the platform were disproportionately more criminally-minded than someone who, say, put their trust in a Premier Inn. But anyone who has experienced turning up late at night at a property they have rented to find someone else already in it and no redress would be forgiven the odd homicidal thought.
The research touches on another malaise that might be more insidious than petty theft or a home wrecked by an over-enthusiastic hen party. The short-term rental market, dominated by Airbnb, may be a corrosive force on an area’s social cohesion. People who are transient in a locality tend to have less stake in the preservation of order and tranquillity than permanent residents. They don’t have a stake and they might be unfamiliar with norms of behaviour or public safety. So the ‘guardian’ effect diminishes over time as more homes are rented out to tourists here today, gone tomorrow.
To be clear, it’s not just Airbnb feeding this community dislocation – nor is it isolated to London. In the south west of England, where I live, the hollowing out of seaside communities colonised through buy-to-let properties or second homes turns once thriving places into off-season ghost towns.
The problem has become acute in Cornwall where short-term lets grew by 661 per cent between 2016 and 2021. This has crippled the supply of housing for poor families on waiting lists, forcing them to move away from where they were born to find somewhere affordable and available to live. Not surprisingly, this exodus fuels local resentment and creates ghettoes of the retired rich which are unsustainable. From next year, councils in Devon will apply a 100 per cent premium on council tax on second homes to try to unblock this strangled supply chain of affordable homes.
Airbnb’s response to these findings was robust. They said the report was misleading and paid no attention to the general rise of crime in London which they said had a far greater impact on communities than the cited data. In response to the charge that they were cutting into available housing stock, they cited their data from London that said listings rented for more than 90 days a year accounted for just 0.17 per cent of all homes in the capital. It also points to what the researchers say are ‘concerted’ safeguarding processes that vet both renters and users to prevent their stock being used for criminal purposes at either end of the relationship.
The claim that the volume of suitable ‘guardians’ and available targets has a direct relationship with crime in an area is contested. There are so many other variables at work here far outside the control of Airbnb. But it seems pretty obvious to anyone who has visited a silent, shuttered ‘posh’ seaside community outside the summer peak that there is a battle here with certain hierarchies and hidden victims. They are the families without homes to bring up their children in those places where they have roots. The people from somewhere with nowhere to go. That’s a social problem far bigger than a spare room to rent or a nicked wallet.
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