Airbnb hosts are ditching the platform over reports that billionaire cofounder Joe Gebbia is working with Elon Musk on his governmental slash-and-burn campaign.
Gebbia, who resigned from Airbnb in 2022 but remains a board member and significant shareholder, has agreed to work with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to The New York Times. The details of his participation are murky, with many members of the DOGE team floating between departments and roles.
But dozens of Airbnb users are infuriated enough by Gebbia’s involvement to quit the site he founded with CEO Brian Chesky in 2008. On Airbnb’s community message boards, more than half of the posts in the last 24 hours were from travelers and hosts threatening to leave the platform over the news.
Krista O’Connell, an Airbnb host of more than a decade, told The Standard she immediately removed her listing when she heard the news about Gebbia. O’Connell lives in Arlington, Virginia, where she has seen first-hand the effects of the mass layoffs and budget cuts enacted by the DOGE team.
“Being in the D.C. area and seeing the impact that DOGE has had on our community and economy, I just feel like I can no longer be an Airbnb host in good faith,” she said. “I don’t want to be a part of an organization that’s generating profit for someone that’s destroying the government and destroying my community.”
O’Connell said she was previously a staunch supporter of Airbnb and even testified to her county board against restrictions on short-term rentals. In 2021, when the company offered to pay for refugees from Afghanistan to stay in Airbnbs for free, she and her family took in an Afghan woman and child for several weeks.
“I was just honored to be a part of that,” she said. “How could a company that did that now work with the Trump administration that has no respect for refugees?”
Kathleen Zeren, a landscape designer from Candler, North Carolina, has been hosting since 2014. She recently retired and planned to rent out her home and camper van to fund her travel, banking on more than 500 positive reviews. Now she isn’t sure what she’s going to do.
“If [Gebbia] is associated with DOGE and still a part of Airbnb, then I’m out of it,” she said. “He’s not allowed to help ruin our democracy and trade for money – I can’t support that. I don’t want to give him any of my money.”
Zeren said she has blocked off all future dates for her rental cabin and is holding off on posting her house and van. She is looking for another platform to list them on, but “all the other ones sort of suck.”
“I’m really kind of stuck,” she said. “We all need our incomes. I don’t know what to do right now.”
Other hosts are worried that boycotts will affect their bottom lines in other ways. Rich Hopkins and Ed Weaver run a farm in Pattersonville, New York, where they rent out a yurt and treehouse and offer experiences like yoga with goats. Hopkins said they are on the fence about leaving Airbnb, given that they are “pretty invested,” but are concerned that Gebbia’s actions could draw liberal renters away from the site — and their farm.
“I don’t want to be a part of an organization that’s generating profit for someone that’s destroying the government and destroying my community.”
Krista O’Connell
“Having a yurt and a treehouse, a lot of our clientele tends to lean our way anyway, so they’d be the first to jump on a boycott,” he said, adding that many of their renters come from Canada and are upset about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “I think everyone’s going to be affected by these events.”
Steve Gabriel, another farmer from New York, said he has already been affected by Trump administration cutbacks. On top of renting out space on their farm, he and his wife occasionally take government contracts — many of which have been put on hold thanks to federal spending freezes.
“Contracts we have with the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] have a very uncertain future,” he said. “We’ve started a few things and now might not get paid for them.”
Because of this, Gabriel and his wife, self-described political independents, pulled their listings when they saw reports that Gebbia was joining DOGE. “While Airbnb has been an incredibly important part of our rental business and farm as a whole, it’s important for us to know the companies we’re working with have a thoughtful approach to the welfare of our fellow citizens,” he said.
In a statement, Airbnb reiterated that Gebbia has not been involved in day-to-day operations of the company since 2022. “Airbnb has always been about more than the viewpoint of any one person. Our community is made up of millions of hosts and hundreds of millions of guests from all walks of life,” a spokesperson said.
Gebbia, who met Chesky while they were students at the Rhode Island School of Design, was deeply involved in the company’s meteoric rise, serving as chief product officer and pioneering the philanthropic arm Airbnb.org. He was a consistent Democratic donor up through the last election cycle but recently admitted on X that he had voted for Trump. He is a vocal supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, and the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Gebbia serves on the board of Tesla and is a close personal friend of Musk.
Gebbia has not confirmed his participation in the DOGE initiative. His spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
O’Connell, the host from Arlington, said she hopes Gebbia steps back from either DOGE or the Airbnb board so she can continue using the rental platform. “I like Airbnb, I’ve advocated for it, I’ve benefitted from it,” she said. “But I can’t be a part of the destruction that I’m seeing in the D.C. area and the U.S. government.”