As the New Year approaches, the market for online short rent housing in the form of home stay is booming. As online house selection, electronic payment, password unlocking, and bag check in are available through the network platform, landlords and tenants can even meet without meeting. The "shared accommodation" business of online short-term rental has developed rapidly.

Xinhua News Agency reporters had previously investigated and found that there were problems in the field of online short-term rental housing, such as occupancy registration, fire safety, housing qualification, etc. Recently, the reporter conducted a follow-up investigation and found that related problems still exist.

The short rental housing platform with multiple land networks has not yet fulfilled the responsibility of checking the identity of residents

According to the data of the National Information Center, in 2018, the scale of shared accommodation transactions in China was about 16.5 billion yuan, an increase of 37.5% over the previous year, and the number of tenants reached 79.45 million; The number of domestic houses sharing accommodation platforms was about 3.5 million, up 16.7% over the previous year, covering nearly 500 cities in China. The problem of identity registration and verification loopholes of check-in personnel has always existed in this field.

In recent years, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hebei and other places have successively issued regulations requiring relevant network platforms to verify the identity of check-in passengers. Some online short-term rental platforms also claimed to cooperate with the police to verify the identity of occupants in some cities through face recognition technology and intelligent door locks. However, the reporter found that the relevant loopholes still exist.

In the second half of this year, the reporter twice booked a short-term rental house in Beijing on the online platform "Abiying". After paying the fee, the landlord only asked the reporter for the ID card photo. Until checking out the next day, no one contacted the reporter for identity verification. At the beginning of December, the reporter logged on the same platform to book a room in Tianjin. After online payment, he only needed to provide the landlord with an ID card number, and then he could directly unlock the room with a password.

A few days ago, the reporter logged on the Piggy Short Rental Platform and asked several homeowners whether they could stay without ID cards. Some homeowners said "just tell me the ID card number", while others said "ID card photos can be issued" or "no need to check ID cards". Since then, the reporter has booked a room in Chaoyang District of Beijing through this platform, and no relevant verification has been carried out from check in to check out.

The reporter learned from the police that there are many potential omissions related to online short-term rental housing. Since this year, Anhui police have checked 506 short-term rental houses of various types, including 9 gambling dens involving pornography, and arrested more than 40 suspects of various types of illegal crimes; In Zhejiang, Chongqing and other places, there have also been criminal suspects living in online short-term rental housing.

There are many hidden dangers in fire safety of short-term rental housing with network lease, and there are many problems in housing qualification

On the spot, the reporter found that some online short-term rental houses were not equipped with fire extinguishers, smoke masks and other fire-fighting equipment. In some places, there were also situations such as pulling wires privately, which could easily lead to fire. In Beijing, the district where the reporter booked a room from the Piglet Short Rental Platform was built around 1999. The facilities in the building are old and aging, the corridor lights are dim, and many sundries are stacked. The reporter found no fire emergency equipment and evacuation diagram in the room. In August this year, the Yancheng police found that there were no fire safety facilities in many short rent houses.

Non compliance of the platform housing supply also occurs from time to time, and non short-term rental housing, partition housing and other situations can be seen on the platform. The reporter found that the information on the network platform was inconsistent with the actual situation through "piggy rent". The reporter saw on the spot that the original living room of the room was divided into two rooms in the platform picture, and half of the balcony separated from one of the rooms could be seen, which was a partition room that was explicitly prohibited. Seeing that the reporter was worried about the security of the house, the landlord said, "If someone comes to check, he will change your room, and we will deal with the rest."

Another consumer told the reporter that he had booked a short rent apartment in Shanghai at the end of July this year in "Piglet Short Lease", but in fact this is a long rent apartment that cannot be rented for a short time according to regulations. He was therefore questioned by the local police, which seriously affected his travel itinerary and experience.

According to the prediction of the National Information Center, by 2020, the transaction scale of China's shared accommodation market is expected to reach 50 billion yuan, the number of shared houses will exceed 6 million, and the number of tenants will exceed 100 million. Liu Junhai, a professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China, believes that special attention should be paid to the risks of public security, fire protection and privacy information security.

Expert: The responsibility of "compacting" the network platform is the key to solving the governance problem

Experts said that the current governance difficulties in relevant fields focus on the regulatory basis, audit standards and platform responsibilities.

The industry supervision basis and strength are insufficient. Xue Jun, director of the E-commerce Law Research Center of Peking University, believes that the current adjustment of the online short-term rental housing industry mainly depends on e-commerce law, and the scope and strength are obviously insufficient. For example, there is a lack of unified and authoritative norms formulated by the housing construction department for the compliance supervision of the housing source categories on the platform. And the fire department also lacks the basis for strict supervision and review of online short-term rental housing.

According to the Regulations of Hebei Province on the Administration of Public Security in Leased Houses, those who rent online rooms to people without valid identity documents will only be fined more than 200 yuan but less than 500 yuan, which is obviously insufficient.

The review of the platform is not strict, and some landlords connive at or engage in illegal behaviors for profit. In Tianjin, Chengdu and other places, the landlord told the reporter that when he checked in, he could simply issue an ID card number to the online platform for registration. As for the verification responsibility, some landlords said that "no one can check it". In Beijing, some landlords said that most of the online short-term rental housing industry makes money by "subletting". In order to make more money through "volume", there are also a lot of illegal partitions and alterations. Many photos uploaded to the platform are fake.

The platform failed to strengthen the safety responsibility measures or "dump the boiler" or implement them. According to the official website of Piglet, tenants will be verified through the national second-generation ID card verification system to ensure the authenticity of tenants. The reporter interviewed landlords in Beijing, Tianjin, Chengdu and other places. They said that they could not determine the identity of the occupants because they did not meet with the tenants to verify their certificates. Recently, the "Abby Welcome" platform has added the requirement that domestic and foreign tenants go to the local public security department to register before check-in to the landlords' code on the official website. Experts believe that such a regulation is tantamount to "throwing the pot".

Qiu Baochang, an expert of the Expert Committee of the China Consumer Association, believes that the responsibility of "compacting" the online short-term rental housing platform is the key to improving the governance effect. He suggested that we should improve the efficiency of building rules and regulations, fill in the current gaps in fire safety, building structure safety, personal safety, privacy information security and other aspects of short rent housing on the Internet, such as home stay, in addition to the e-commerce law, and establish a mechanism for the public security department, tourism department and other regulatory agencies to have clear rights and responsibilities and coordinate supervision. Clarify the responsibilities of platform operators, regulators and platform merchants, especially strengthen the audit and inspection responsibilities of platform operators. In addition, the platform should also effectively upgrade its face recognition password lock, ID card NFC unlocking and other functions by increasing investment in technological transformation and providing subsidies for technological upgrading, so as to ensure the security of the platform's houses.