NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 44

That's not very reassuring in light of
a new study, published in May in the
journal Injury Prevention, that found
a lack of fire and life safety features
in Airbnb properties in 16 United
States cities, including New York, Los
Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco.
Researchers analyzed about 121,000
of the roughly 600,000 Airbnb listings
in the U.S., finding that 20 percent of
the property owners did not report
having smoke alarms, 42.5 percent
didn't report having carbon monoxide
(CO) alarms, 58 percent didn't report
having fire extinguishers, and 64 percent didn't report having first aid kits.
"This is really surprising because most
fire deaths and carbon monoxide poisonings happen in residential housing,"
study co-author Vanya Jones of the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health told Reuters.
The study comes at a time when
cities nationwide are moving to more
tightly regulate Airbnb and other shortterm rental properties. But as some

44 | NFPA JOURNAL * J U L Y /A U G U S T 2 0 1 8

communities have learned, regulation
of such a new and unique building use
is easier said than done.
"All of a sudden, we're sending building officials out and they're seeing
things they've never seen before,"
said Keith Burlingame, director of the
Rhode Island Fire Safety Code Board
of Appeal and Review. "Classification
of these properties is the biggest challenge that we are facing at the outset."

Classifying something new
What are these properties? That's the
question building and fire code officials
have struggled to answer since shortterm rental companies like Airbnb
began launching several years ago.
Are they hotels? Are they residential
properties? Or are they something else
altogether?
Not much insight can be gained
from digging into widely used building codes. The International Building
Code (IBC), for example, applies to
what it calls "transient" residential

occupancies, or places where occupants stay no longer than 30 days. That
broad definition seems to fit the bill for
Airbnb rentals and similar properties.
But it also lists hotels and boarding
houses as examples, and an argument
could be made that most Airbnb properties aren't similar enough to a hotel
to be regulated as such.
That's the logic Burlingame subscribes to. He told me in May that
building code officials in the small
coastal city of Newport, Rhode Island,
have been classifying short-term rental
properties under the IBC, instead of
classifying them under the International Residential Code that applies
to one- and two-family homes. That
means, like hotels, they're required to
have fire sprinklers and meet other life
safety requirements for accessibility
and egress. In reality, though, that's
not happening. A search of Airbnbs in
Newport using the company's website
showed over 300 available properties, some of which didn't even report

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETT Y IMAGES

HOTEL CALIFORNIA?
Housing activists in San Francisco protest the conversion of
an apartment building into Airbnb rentals. Safety advocates
have cited fire and other hazards among their concerns as
the number and type of residential properties devoted to
short-term rentals increases nationwide.



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - July/August 2018

Contents
NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 1
NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - Contents
NFPA Journal - July/August 2018 - 3
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