A Calgary family say their home has been destroyed by partying guests who rented it on the popular accommodation website Airbnb.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1. The Calgary couple rented their home to two people.
2. It was the first time they were renting their home.
3. The police came round during the weekend but saw nothing suspicious.
4. When the Calgary couple arrived on Monday, everybody had already left.
5. The Calgary couple found their house flooded.
6. The Calgary couple are not living in their own home at the moment.
7. The damage to the house amounts to under $50,000.
8. The police don’t know who rented the house.
9. The fine to the person who rented the house might amount to $5,000.
10. Airbnb has issued a statement saying they cannot take responsibility for the damage.
Would you rent out your home to strangers over the internet? A lot of people do but after renting out their home on Airbnb, a Calgary couple came back to find their place trashed, furniture destroyed, garbage everywhere, chicken drumsticks left in their shoes, that's an odd touch. The couple describing the whole ordeal as unimaginable. Well, Nancy Woods following the story for us with gusto, not that you liked this at all but you're fascinated by the story.
I think like a lot of Canadians is just the worst case scenario for renting out your home and Mark and Star King thought they were renting their home to four people who were in Calgary for the weekend, for a wedding. In fact… and it wasn't their first time renting through Airbnb, they'd done it before and they had pretty good experiences. During the weekend neighbours say a bus pulled up, a party bus with about a hundred people in it and at some point the neighbours got concerned and even called the police but when the police showed up, things didn't seem to be noisy so they didn't even go into the house to see what was happening but when the Kings showed up Monday morning, the party was still going on and they basically had to beg them to leave. There was broken glass, the furniture was wrecked, the hardwood floors were buckling because there were pools of alcohol in them, the toilets were blocked with condoms, food left up to spoil, cigarette butts everywhere. Police say there was some kind of drug-induced orgy that had gone on. Now the Kings have children and they say their home will never be the same for them. In fact, they say they would rather have seen it burnt to the ground than defiled the way it was. Here's Mark King.
For me it was shock and horror and disbelief. I just feel so violated and so… bigger than the physical damage, you know, is just we don't have a home, we’re homeless, we’re you know staying with relatives and this… the sense that our lives are broken.
Such a strong language but I get it that I would not want, I wouldn't want to see this, you know.
They said they had to go away for a day and come back the next day and look at it.
So you, you look at this and you figure that's got to be criminal conduct but it's not a slam-dunk criminal case.
Oh, no. The police say there was about fifty thousand dollars worth of damage done and they say they have a name of the person who rented. They want to talk to him. They say it’s a Calgary man but here's what the constable had to say about it.
Personally, I’d like to speak to the person that rented it. We’d like to hear his side of the story and how went out of hand and who he would… like we just want to speak to him first. He's pretty much our person of interest right now.
Now, that’s Sam Horvat, Constable Horvat says he's never seen so much damage done in such a short period of time, just three days. It even made him angry to see it. And the man who rented the Kings’ house could be charged with mischief to property, over five thousand dollars. Now as for Airbnb, it put out a statement today saying we have banned this guest from Airbnb and our trust and safety team will offer its full assistance to law enforcement in any investigation of this matter. It also says that the King family will be reimbursed because it has insurance fund for this kind of occasion which it says is rare and that it is also giving them accommodations until the house can be cleaned up if a house can ever be cleaned up for something like that.
When the family members say they’d say rather it had been burned to the ground… it feels like no amount of compensation is going to make them feel better but, you know what, maybe it'll get cleaned up until they feel okay.
I hope so.
Nancy thank you very much.
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