Anna, a single woman in London subletting her flat on Airbnb, arrived home to find a man sneaking out of her bedroom. She had rented her room to a woman on the holiday rental site, but there was no mention that a man would be staying with her. “I went into my sitting room and just as I was taking off my jacket, I saw a guy creeping out of the room and then down the stairs and out the door very quietly,” she says. She shared her story with researchers George Maier and Kate R Gilchrist from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), who have looked into the intersection between Airbnb and rentier capitalism – or, essentially, what happens when key types of capitalist assets are owned by a select few. In her statement, she says she felt uncomfortable and like her privacy had been invaded.
Anna is one of a small number of the capital’s female property owners now surviving via Airbnb – even subletting their own rooms while they sleep in the lounge – in order to make ends meet. In London’s broken housing market, which has now been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, women are going to drastic measures to keep a roof over their heads and pay their bills.
