There’s No Place Like (Your) Home: Evaluating Existing Models and Proposing Solutions for Room-sharing Regulation

As urban housing grows increasingly unaffordable, city-dwelling millennials are forced to consider novel ways to pay the rent. The intersection of costs outpacing a reasonable share of income, demand for short-term housing, and ubiquitous personal technology has spawned an entire “room-sharing” industry, dominated by start-up Airbnb. Facilitated by Airbnb’s smartphone application, millennials open up their condominiums, houses, and apartments to complete strangers for short-term use. But, with the growth of the room-sharing economy come concerns for its participants, such as apportioning liability and, the focus of this Comment, determining how room-sharing fits within existing regulatory schemes