Health Equity: Companies, Investors & News

Open-source telemedicine for communities without doctors.

Open-source tools for community-based healthcare delivery.

Equipping families with essential caregiving skills.

Turning point-of-care ultrasound into structured clinical-trial data.

Free cancer-care tracking for patients and caregivers between appointments.

Airbnb.org is an independent U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity that pays for free, short-term housing for people affected by disasters and other crises. The organization launched in 2020 after eight years of crisis-housing work through Airbnb's Open Homes program, which began when a host named Shell offered her home at no charge after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Airbnb.org is legally separate from Airbnb, Inc.; Airbnb covers the charity's operating costs, supplies access to its technology platform and services, and says it does not earn money from Airbnb.org-supported stays. The operating model is housing assistance rather than conventional grantmaking. Airbnb.org works with vetted local nonprofit partners that identify and refer eligible people, volunteers, first responders, refugees, and families traveling for medical care. Airbnb.org then funds bookings on Airbnb's platform. Hosts are generally paid as they would be for an ordinary stay and receive AirCover and specialized support; some separately choose to discount a stay, offer it free, or donate a portion of their payout. An Airbnb.org emergency-stay host should therefore not be described as synonymous with Airbnb's broader commercial-host community. Airbnb.org organizes its work around emergency-response stays, medical stays, and resettlement stays. Its official site says more than 60,000 hosts have helped provide housing to more than 250,000 people since the 2012 origin of the program. It separately reports 1.6 million nights of free emergency housing since Airbnb.org launched in 2020. Those are facilitated stays and nights, not a count of unique guests, grants, or dollars deployed. For January through June 2026, Airbnb.org reported 87 disaster responses, more than 28,000 nights provided, and 5,776 hosts who donated. It also reported that an Airbnb.org booking cost an average of US$110 per night globally over the preceding five years. These organization-reported operating measures show delivery capacity, but they are not assets under management, audited grant expenditures, or a committed funding pool.