Author Archives: Nina Medvedeva

Nina Medvedeva is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota: Twin Cities. Her research explores what short-term rental regulation debates can teach us about how city residents imagine and govern the home.
Four row houses on 13th Street and W Street, SE in historic Anacostia.

Airbnb’s Location Ratings as Anti-Black Spatial Disinvestment in Washington D.C.

In 2016, Airbnb host Synta Keeling appeared on NPR’s Hidden Brain to share her story of hosting as a Black woman living east of the Anacostia River. She recounts what a white male guest told her after a day out in D.C., “I was the only white person on the bus, and it was all these black people. And I asked myself, were they going to hurt me? Am I unsafe? And then I realized they weren’t hurting me and nothing was going to happen to me. Like, they were just sitting there normal.” (read more...)