Five friends and I (young female working professionals) were meant to stay at Matthew’s location for a weekend trip and ultimately had to get a hotel instead. Upon arriving to Matthew’s location, my Uber driver told me we were in an unsafe area and warned us not to leave the Airbnb, especially not at night. This would have infringed on our entire trip, as we were excited to visit downtown at night due to it’s close proximity. Matthew’s location is in an “eclectic” and up and coming part of the city, but from the point of view of six young women traveling in unfamiliar territory, to be warned about the safety of its location at the start of our stay was quite jarring.
I messaged Matthew multiple times before leaving to express our concerns, to which he didn’t respond for more than five hours (by the time we did hear back, we had already left). He immediately mentioned that the next door neighbors were getting evicted and dismissed our concerns. I informed him of my group’s demographic upon requesting to stay for the weekend, therefore we felt he had the responsibility in that moment to inform us fully of his property and it’s surroundings. He reimbursed us only the small cleaning fee although we informed of our intentions to not stay prior to the official check-in time (we did early check-in) and didn’t spend a single night in his location.
Per the Airbnb itself, it’s clean at a glance but once you look a little harder it needs work. There are broken blinds and several stains on the walls/furniture. I’m sure this property is fine for people older in age and/or people more familiar with the area, but we did not feel safe and were offered very little communication from Matthew.