While she’s studying for a master’s degree at Northwestern University, Christine Kaya Hewitt and her husband, Jason, have been renting out three of the four bedrooms in their house outside Kansas City through Airbnb.
The self-proclaimed “empty nesters” have done a brisk business, bringing in a mix of business travelers from around the region who need a place to stay and some longer-term renters. Those recently including a home health nurse with a temporary assignment in the area and a medical student taking a nearby course. But that all changed with the coronavirus pandemic, which Hewitt says left them suddenly facing a largely empty calendar for the short-term rentals that had come to represent 50% of the couple’s take-home income.
“My husband is I guess what they call underemployed,” Hewitt says. “He’s got a full-time job, but he’s not really working at the level for which he’s trained to work because there just haven’t been enough jobs.”
The family has some savings—”We’re a Dave Ramsey family, and we have an emergency fund,” Hewitt says—and her adult daughter may move into one of the bedrooms and pay some rent. But the sudden, dramatic shutdown in travel has deprived the family of what was a steady income stream that Hewitt had assumed would support her through her schooling and further training.
“This might be our new normal for a while, and I don’t know what we’ll do,” she says. “It’s a big house. We have a $1,000 a month mortgage, which I know is much better than many people in our neighborhood.”
“A flood of cancellations”
As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, travel has come to a record halt, striking the entire hospitality industry, including big hotel brands and major commercial Airbnb landlords who have been forced to lay off or furlough staff.
As for how online vacation rentals will fare in the long-term, experts say the shutdown has raised questions that are still too early to answer. The pandemic may change housing supply in cities and vacation towns where activists say Airbnbs have depleted a limited housing pool, driving up rental prices. Some activists are already seeing conversions to longer term rentals, though the ultimate impact remains unclear. But in the short-term, the crisis may be a particular shock to individual hosts who use money from short-term rentals to attend school, fund startup businesses, or simply pay living expenses.
