Lending out house for Shabbos

amother

Slateblue

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 10:40 am

Seems like every time we allow guests to use our house for Shabbos we come back to something broken, or just the house just plain dirty.

I always wanted to do Hachnasas Orchim and I love that I can give back to the community and allow people to use my home, as sometimes I need somewhere to stay and am always appreciative of my host....

The thing is, 9/10 times I am hosting strangers (that I don't even meet because they come after we have left for Shabbos and leave before we come back) and I don't have any guarantee that if G-d forbid something goes missing/gets broken that I will be paid back and this makes me nervous to lend out our apartment.

What would be normal (don't' want to scare people off) in terms of making some sort of contract for people who use our home over Shabbos that would entail them taking responsibility for what happens while they are in our home?

Delores

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 10:49 am

The normal thing is that guests need to be super careful in other people's homes and offer to replace anything they destroyed without being asked. It does not sound like you are dealing with normal circumstances at all.

Anonymiss 1

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 11:03 am

I think your best bet would be to talk to the hosts. Presumably neighbors that you know well? They should vouch for their guests and serve as intermediaries and even take responsibility for damage if necessary.

OOTforlife

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 11:15 am

I don't think this is a situation where you can effectively enforce compensation by agreement or shield yourself from risk. It sounds like normal guest behavior in your community is below the standard that you are comfortable with for your home. No contract can change that and investigation probably won't reduce the risk to a level you're comfortable with.

You can still do the mitzvah of hachnasas orchim by hosting people for meals or by separating/ arranging any space lent for overnights in a way that even a herd of drunk frat boys would be OK to leave alone there. But trying to change people's regular behavior when they're unsupervised is a losing game.

Runner18

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 1:20 pm

So this issue is a sore spot between my husband and I because he doesn't think it's a big deal with lend out our apartment.

I don't like people staying in my apartment when I'm not there.
ESPECIALLY when I don't know them.
I don't care if they are relatives of people I know.
People break things.
People snoop.
People don't respect requests (I.e. no one should sleep on the couch, only sleep in this room, etc)

We once came back from a Yom Tov and there had been a miscommunication-- and we arrived back to find our apartment a mess because the guests still had all their stuff there. Since then my husband is more understanding of my feelings about this issue.

I do very much feel I do hachanasas orchim in the way I host shabbos meals, have sleepover guests WHEN WE ARE HOME....

but having people stay in our place when we aren't there-- that is where I draw the line these days. You can too.

myname1

Fri, Aug 14 2015, 3:00 am

You can also try limiting the number of guests. An older/younger couple is less likely to do much damage than a huge family with tons of young kids. Even if you have the sleeping space for more, you can try closing off rooms or only agreeing to smaller families, and see if you see some improvement. I've never come back to anything but a very clean house and sometimes a thank you note and chocolate bar Smile

amother

Aqua

Fri, Aug 14 2015, 7:21 am

We were once put up somewhere, and the hosts locked up the whole house except for the room that they gave up to sleep in. It was extremely generous of them to offer their house for the weekend to strangers (we came in for my nephew's Shabbos bris), and we just picked up toilet paper and some toys for my baby at a nearby store.

At first I thought it was strange, but if that was their comfort level, so be it. And I'm guessing they didn't mean to lock up the toilet paper Smile

(Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I posted this story before)

For you to actually lend out your empty house for the weekend is an extremely high level of generosity. Would you feel comfortable leaving a note (along with maybe some baked goods) expressing how you would like your house to be taken care of?