Stayed at Martha's place with a few friends. Our experience was pretty awful due to a noise issue which I'll describe, but I want to make it clear the main reason I am writing this one-star review is because this woman is racist, immature, and straight delusional.
First off, there was construction happening during our whole stay, and construction men in and around our space the whole time--they were super friendly and not problematic at all, but I'm stating it because we weren't given any warning prior to booking that this would be the case. But we're not a high maintenance group so we just brushed it off.
However, the first three mornings of our stay we were woken up around 7:30-8am to what sounded like hammering and drilling straight into the walls we were staying in.
Basically on the third morning that we were woken up to banging and drilling right into the building--my friend, who is a Black woman just walked outside kind of looking for someone to talk to about the ridiculous construction happening at 8am. She walked outside and passed by the host, Martha and asked her calmly (honestly she was half asleep rubbing her eyes), but she said “does this have to be every morning?” to the host, and Martha responded super short and rude “yep 8am”. And so, my friend just dropped it came back in the house, but she was just confused as to why the host was so rude.
So then I go outside and find Martha, (mind you, Martha isn’t wearing a mask, nor are any of her construction workers and my friend wasn’t wearing one either in honesty because she was half asleep). But I go up to Martha with my mask on and I ask her why there is so much noise at 8am, and why we weren’t informed that there would be construction and men on and around the property prior to us booking. She again responds with hostility saying “8am is regular hours. Maybe if you all went to sleep early you wouldn’t be so tired”—in a passive aggressive hostile tone.
Then she tells me “that girl came at me and got all in my face aggressively about the construction, without a mask or anything just getting in my face--I'm pregnant and she came at me” blah blah. And I asked her what she’s talking about, and she kept repeating that my friend was aggressive with her and that “if she had come out professional like you did, there wouldn’t be a problem”. Mind you, I'm Asian and she probably just didn't feel threatened by me for no reason. Also, we have 5 other girls who saw the way my friend, Kaiya approached Martha--and the construction men, who were super nice and apologetic afterwards because they also saw that Kaiya approached her calmly and politely.
It may not seem like a big deal, but after that, my friends and I genuinely felt concerned and unsafe on this woman’s property who clearly isn’t able to discern events the way they actually occur if she’s dealing with a Black person. To be so hostile to my friend who literally had just woken up and asked like “does the work have to be every morning” is reflective of this woman's own racial biases. If my friend had been in any way aggressive or even rude or disrespectful I would see where Martha is coming from—but she completely made up a situation in her head in which she was a victim of this “aggressive angry Black girl” which was just not the case.
Someone who has such a bias that they can’t objectively perceive events as they occur, should not be hosting people in their homes. I'm pretty sure Airbnb won't do anything, because any time this platform has actually done something about racism, the situation had to be more obvious outright discrimination like canceling a booking due to race or something--but in my opinion these seemingly small instances of bias are equally dangerous and probably waaaayy more common than most people realize.
Since Airbnb likely won't do anything about Martha, I'm hoping someone reads this review and thinks twice before booking because this woman is deeply delusional.