{"id":10503,"date":"2018-07-01T11:13:39","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T18:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/azaroff.com\/?p=10503"},"modified":"2026-09-11T17:48:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T00:48:28","slug":"what-ive-learned-from-home-swapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/?p=10503","title":{"rendered":"What I\u2019ve learned from home-swapping."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

For the last few years, when my family takes vacations we have been swapping homes with people in the cities we visit. We did our first home swap a few years ago in San Francisco, last year we swapped with a couple in Paris, and this summer we\u2019re swapping with families in Hamburg and Bergen, Norway.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an amazing way to travel. Free accommodations mean that we can stay in expensive cities for longer. Being in a home means more space for us to enjoy than a hotel room affords, and we enjoy neighborhoods in cities we would not otherwise spend time in. We feel more like locals when we\u2019re far from home.<\/p>\n

Home-swapping makes me think of my early enthusiasm for the Sharing Economy<\/a>. I still love the idea of sharing the idle capacity<\/a>\u00a0of things you own with other people, and owning things collectively through a co-op-like structure. This form of sharing creates reciprocal relationships and community, and reduces the need for so much stuff to be produced and consumed.<\/p>\n

In the early days of the Sharing Economy, I was a major proponent of what this could mean for communities, for greater equity and environmental sustainability. I was surprised by how quickly the sharing economy gave way to value-extracting businesses like Uber and AirBnB.<\/p>\n

I spend a lot of my working hours trying to ensure that we have a more equitable and sustainable local economy. I think about the velocity of money<\/a>\u00a0within a local economy so money recirculates and has a multiplier effect<\/a>,\u00a0creating more equitable distribution. Companies like Uber do provide work, but it is contract work, lacking the benefits that allow people a higher quality of life. In addition, profits are extracted out of local economies and into maximizing shareholder of people well outside where the work takes place.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t use AirBnB anymore because I see the devastating effect it has on cities like Vancouver which have a housing crunch and near zero rental vacancy rates. I see in my own neighbourhood of Strathcona in Vancouver the rental units that used to provide stable, long-term rental to individuals and families get permanently taken off the market and turned into more profitable AirBnB accommodation. This isn\u2019t having a healthy effect on the livability and viability of our city. (Vancouver has a vacancy rate near zero and 6.2% average annual rental rate increases<\/a>.) That isn\u2019t a form of sharing I recognize as ethical or desirable.<\/p>\n

I sit on the board of Modo Co-operative<\/a>, which allows 20,000 drivers to share over 600 cars. As a co-operative, there is no private ownership, those cars are a community asset. If Modo were to dissolve, the assets would be bequeathed to another community-owned organization like a not-for-profit. I work for Vancity<\/a>, where half a million member-owners pool their money for local reinvestment. It is now a $26.4 Billion pool owned by the community, not private ownership. No one profits inequitably from those community resources. That is more in line with what I originally loved about the sharing economy.<\/p>\n

So we have discovered home-swapping<\/a>\u00a0as a way of truly living out the early (and unfortunately false) promise of the sharing economy. No money changes hands, trust is required and reciprocity is created. I recommend it highly if you need your faith in humanity restored.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last few years, when my family takes vacations we have been swapping homes with people in the cities we visit. We did our first home swap a few years ago in San Francisco, last year we swapped with a couple in Paris, and this summer we\u2019re swapping with families in Hamburg and Bergen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[240,190,242,244,171],"class_list":["post-10503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cooperative","tag-credit-union","tag-modo","tag-sharing-economy","tag-vancity"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37qUH-2Jp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17014,"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10503\/revisions\/17014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azaroff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}