Another day, another opportunity for supercharged displacement driver Airbnb to belittle poor and working class residents in touristy cities. This time around, they’ve locked in Hollywood star and do-gooder Issa Rae to co-opt the “Buy Back the Block” movement of South Los Angeles and bring their looming presence into Inglewood just in time for the Super Bowl.
Issa Rae is the creator, writer, and actor behind Awkward Black Girl and HBO’s hit series Insecure; she is also known for championing the preservation of Black neighborhoods. In its most lucid moments, Insecure keeps it real with its commentary on how the poor are treated by landlords. During the show, she faces eviction from her unit in The Dunes apartments* in Inglewood after receiving a note about her rent increase. In order to keep her home, Issa bargains with her landlord; she is allowed to keep the roof over her head if she steps up as a property manager for the building. In these scenes, Issa seems to understand how stressful and unstable housing can be for anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck.
Issa is well regarded in television circles and local spheres alike for creating a show that advocated for community-driven development to avoid the erasure of Black culture at the hands of profit-hungry investors and landlords. The final episode of Insecure wrapped in December, leaving many to wonder what she will do next, but the greater public didn’t doubt that Issa would continue to represent Inglewood and its neighboring areas authentically.
Last Tuesday, Issa fondly name-dropped her Insecure character Issa Dee in a tweet to announce a partnership with Airbnb: from February 12-14, she will open up her home near Inglewood on the website for $56/night. Provided with her own unique hyperlink to share the news, Rae shared that guests will also be treated to a virtual chat with her among other city-specific activities. Fans rejoiced, and press outlets that picked up on the announcement framed it as a caring response from a local to give out-of-towners a look into her Los Angeles during Valentine’s Day weekend.
Uncoincidentally, Valentine’s Day weekend this year is also Super Bowl weekend. Uncoincidentally, the Super Bowl this year will take place in Inglewood. Uncoincidentally, Airbnb’s biggest moments to shine are events like the Super Bowl, which attracts tens of thousands of tourists looking for quick lodging. If this string of events doesn’t tip you off on the impeccable timing of Issa’s announcement, then the fact that her Airbnb experience also comes with a “‘Game Day’ taco dinner for two” should.
Issa’s listing is a mere drop in the bucket of search results for lodging over the past few weeks. Look no further than to recently revised names of Airbnb listings. Nationally celebrated sporting games are Airbnb’s favorite moments because they rake in incredible profits from such events.
An uptick in Airbnb searches is never an isolated phenomenon. We are a few days out now from Super Bowl LVI, but Los Angeles’ poor and unhoused residents have been subject to overt, inhumane sweeps for over three weeks. Since January, local journalists, organizers, and TMZ have been on the ground grimly reporting on Caltrans workers forcibly displacing residents near Sofi Stadium without any credible offers of services or housing vouchers. For those who are barely hanging on to their homes, members of nearby tenant associations like Lennox-Inglewood Tenants Union have long been speaking up about predatory landlords who harass and threaten current tenants to force them out as they try to capitalize on the gentrification of Inglewood.
It’s important to recognize that Airbnb abets elected officials and landowners alike to banish residents. Its agenda in the real estate state is to convince cities to switch from long-term to short-term rentals because the latter options are more profitable. Thus longtime residents get displaced in favor of nomads and tourists who are willing to pay above-market prices to enjoy a noncommittal stay.
On the surface, Airbnb has positioned itself as a people-friendly solution to lodging when traveling; in reality, it has accumulated a lot of power in political spaces. In L.A., no elected official has the will to ensure landlords adhere to ordinances that attempt to control the quantity and profitability of short-term rentals. Furthermore, we can gather from Airbnb’s long-term partnerships — such as with the Olympics that will culminate with LA28 — that it wants to continually build with those on the side of power and profit. All the nefarious long-term planning gets covered up by charitable acts once enormous events come and go; Airbnb plans to chuck a couple thousand of dollars at local groups in South LA to cement the illusion of being a community-minded company before they hop to the next big event where they can accelerate gentrification.
Capitalizing on Issa Rae’s fame and proximity to Inglewood shows that Airbnb will stop at nothing to make long-term renting nearly impossible in popular cities. But the harder truth is that these partnerships are a two-way street: Issa willingly ignored the needs of people in her neighborhood by committing to a PR stunt and marketing campaign that incentivizes landlords and property owners to reconsider how they look at apartment rental businesses. It behooves her also to consider what more she invites in by opening up her house in South L.A. via Airbnb: policing and surveillance, to name a few. Love her or not, anyone would find Issa’s collaboration with Airbnb jarring, if not hypocritical.
A celebrity’s announcement of becoming a host on Airbnb should not engender inspiration or warm, fuzzy feelings about how she keeps it real. Using celebrity to celebrate Black culture under these circumstances actually accelerates the growth of the pricey short-term rental market that uproots Black and brown Angelenos all throughout the city, especially in Inglewood. In a treacherous time when Los Angeles continues to lose housing stock, it doesn’t matter what a celebrity with goodwill thinks is good: if you’re partnering with the displacement machine, your intentions mean nothing here.
*Ironically, The Dunes apartments, which has now become a popular tourist attraction for Insecure fans, is owned and managed in real life by the slumlords of Mabry Management Inc., who have a history of leaving apartment units in South L.A. in disrepair and harassing tenants to the point of eviction. The company also has a litigious history of suing tenants out of their homes for not being able to afford rent.