The 234 Apartment

Relationships happen in stages. You don't just meet someone and automatically become their significant other. I've tried that. In fact, there is a big difference between being exclusive and being in a relationship, though sometimes, it can be hard to identify. First, you meet and message. You'll go on a first date, and if there's chemistry, you'll go on more. You'll see one another for a few months, along with a few other candidates and Tinder swipes, until you finally decide your crush is the person you want to be exclusive with.  But, you're not quite boyfriend and girlfriend yet. and that's where it gets complicated. How do you know when you are truly done seeing other people, and have moved to a committed relationship with your partner? Sometimes, this confusion can make me want to come to every date with a checklist: “So, we've gone out, like, five times. Are we still allowed to send memes to other people? Also, I'm ready to be done with y...

Earlier this month, Skift published a comprehensive look at Airbnb’s Road to an IPO, or initial public offering on the stock market. While the story primarily focused on all of the many things the company is doing (and needs to do) as it pursues that inevitable IPO, it wasn’t necessarily a story about what it takes for a company like Airbnb to go public. Indeed, what Airbnb is doing right now in its efforts to become a “super brand of travel,” or a new breed of online travel agency (OTA), speaks to the very future of travel. Already, we’ve seen the company expand into tours and activities with the November launch of its Trips business, adding to its already robust 4-million-listing- strong Homes business . CEO Brian Chesky has also hinted the company may soon enter the flights sector as well. It’s a glimpse of what we as travelers can expect to see and to experience in the next few years as platforms like Airbnb continue to evolve and to attempt to solve the many pain points we st...

As rents climb across the U.S., more people are being driven into homelessness. In some of the country’s hottest housing markets , rent increases have a strong connection with upticks in the homeless population , according to a study released this week from real- estate website Zillow . In New York City, a 5% rent hike would lead to nearly 3,000 more people becoming homeless. In Los Angeles, the same increase in rent would leave around 2,000 people without a place to live. To produce the report, Zillow created a model that analyzed different variables, including how population growth and changes in rent affect the homelessness rate. The model also considered the accuracy of homeless counts. Zillow then passed Census population figures , homelessness counts and its own rental data through the model to determine the relationship between rental prices and homelessness in different cities. The Census population numbers also take into account people who move in or out of a city, inclu...