Man Finds Strange Couple in His Bed After Roommate Airbnbs His Condo
A Chicago condo owner who lives part-time in California returned home to find all his booze gone, a mysterious hookah on his dining room table, and a young couple sleeping in his bed. As he asked the couple to leave his apartment, they told him they’d booked the room on Airbnb.
That was very weird, condo owner Robert Corwin told CBS Chicago, because he’d never listed his place on the website. But he quickly found who had: his roommate, who’d been renting the other bedroom from him.
“He even used my photo” for two Airbnb listings, Corwin said.
That gentleman is, needless to say, no longer living there.
Now Corwin wants some kind of recompense from Airbnb, considering the possibility that “orgies, or like, drugs” could have gone on at his place without his knowledge. (He has a vivid imagination, but it’s not that farfetched: Airbnb places have been used for orgies on multiple occasions, and the infamous “XXX Freakfest” incident stands as the original Airbnb cautionary tale.)
Airbnb makes clear that it doesn’t get involved in owner-renter disputes, and that people using the platform assume all the risk, but it has compensated users for particularly egregious incidents in the past—that’s just good PR. In this case, though, there wasn’t much damage to the property (just some missing booze) and all Corwin is asking is that they help him “go after” his former roommate or ban him from ever using the platform again.
“This property is no longer listed on Airbnb, and we are reviewing this matter fully,” Airbnb told CBS Chicago.