Airbnb wants to provide temporary housing for 100,000 displaced people, and to help reach that goal, the home-sharing service has put together a team lead by designer and Architecture for Humanity co-founder Cameron Sinclair. Sinclair heads architecture firm Small Works, which focuses on building for communities in need, making him the perfect fit for Airbnb’s temporary housing project.
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Home-sharing service Airbnb has assembled an in-house humanitarian team headed by designer Cameron Sinclair, to help it achieve its aim of providing temporary housing for 100,000 people within five years.
Dezeen understands that Sinclair, who previously co-founded Architecture for Humanity and later worked for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's humanitarian charity the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, has been working with the San Francisco startup for around a year, driving a series of pilot projects and gearing up for an official launch of the team this summer.
The team aims to leverage Airbnb's network of hosts to provide accommodation for refugees, people affected by natural disasters and other displaced people in need of housing.
It hopes to get one million people who rent their homes through Airbnb to register as "hosts for good".
The team is the brainchild of Airbnb co-founder and designer Joe Gebbia, who wants to ensure the company, which was recently valued at $31 billion, uses its network of around three million hosts to help solve problems in the world.