Story
Airbnb, Zillow, and the gap in between
In the summer of 2021, I interned in San Diego and couldn't line up housing before I got there. I spent my first week in an Airbnb while I searched, and it got expensive quickly, since Airbnb is really built for short vacation stays. Zillow wasn't much better. It's not designed for anyone who needs a furnished place for longer than a few nights but shorter than a full lease.
So I lived on Facebook. Group after group, people were either looking for a room or trying to list one, and scams were everywhere. That's how I eventually found mine.
None of it felt unique to me, though. The same thing happens to anyone interning, studying abroad, or moving to a new city with a start date and no real network yet.
Building Ohana
Ezra and I officially founded Ohana in March 2023 because we had lived versions of that scramble ourselves as interns. By then New York had already been tightening short-term rentals, and Local Law 18 pushed even more demand into informal channels. People still needed real housing for the summer, a semester away, or a few months on a new job, but the path of least resistance was often invite-only group chats and handshake deals. We set out to build a compliant lane: mid-term subleases with an intro call, a written agreement, and payments on platform so hosts and guests know what they are signing up for.
In April 2023 we were accepted to Neo Accelerator, which gave us space to focus and meet operators who had wrestled with the same market from every angle.
Ohana focuses on stays from about thirty days up to a year: long enough to count as real housing, short enough that people still need help matching. After the rules shifted, NYC listings and bookings moved quickly as supply looked for a legitimate home. Summer interns and rotating renters showed up with real dates, and hosts needed a workflow that did not look like dodging the law.