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Six international students, “hand picked” for a summer program at Cornell University, were put up by the school in a nearby Airbnb - where the young scholars allegedly managed to cause $200,000 worth of damage in just eight days.
Eliza VanCort, a motivational speaker, communications strategist, and best-selling author who Cornell named an Alice Cook House fellow, is hauling both the university and Airbnb into court over the “bizarre” ways in which she says her home in Ithaca, New York, was defiled.
The exchange students caused “extensive damage and destruction to [VanCort’s] personal property… including, but not limited to, extensive damage to the woodwork, walls, stairs, countertops, and cabinetry throughout,” according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in New York State Supreme Court.
In photos and video footage that VanCort shared with The Independent, large swaths of wood flooring, moulding, and trim throughout the craftsman-style house, which is worth an estimated $700,000, appears to have been methodically scraped down and deeply gouged.
In the video, VanCort describes the damage to the home, which sits in the college town’s historic Professors’ Row. She points out antique French doors, freshly denuded of their varnish; a piano with a similarly abraded surface, and an entire kitchen counter picked completely clean of all the grout once between its tiles.
VanCort also says one of her antique rugs looked like the edge had been intentionally unknotted, and patches of paint had been systematically picked off random surfaces.
Some of the more pedestrian devastation included cracks and deep indentations in walls, a busted garbage disposal, kitchen cabinets that no longer close properly, and dozens of tiny screws removed from doorknobs, latches, and cabinetry hardware, VanCort says.
What really hurt, according to 53-year-old VanCort, was the destruction of a beloved cast-iron pan that she says survived the Holocaust, getting passed down through the family until it finally ended up with her. When VanCort returned home, she discovered the pan’s well-seasoned patina, baked on over the course of the past 80 years, had been fastidiously stripped off with a knife or some other sort of tool.
The highly rated Airbnb “superhost”, whose professional work imparts lessons learned from a traumatic childhood that included being kidnapped three times by her mentally ill mom, said she’s lucky enough to have the resources necessary to fight the global rental platform.
A mother-of-four, VanCort said she has been an Airbnb host for years, and has had excellent luck with guests. Inviting people into her home has been a great pleasure, according to VanCort, who described some of the wonderful connections she has made with travelers, calling the incident in question particularly shocking. VanCort “absolutely never” expected what she found upon returning home, she said.
“My whole life has been dedicated to helping people, and I feel like I have a moral obligation to speak up on this,” VanCort told The Independent.
In an email, a Cornell spokeswoman said: “At this time, we will politely decline to comment.”
Airbnb told The Independent that it sent a third-party investigator to VanCort’s home to assess the claims, and that their inspection, along with what Airbnb said was “time-stamped documentation from the guests,” led them to the determination that the damage “pre-dated the guests’ stay and were caused by years of standard wear and tear. “
According to the lawsuit, VanCort’s domestic nightmare can be traced back to summer 2023, when an administrator at Cornell contacted her through Airbnb about booking a stay at her six-bedroom home for six exchange students.
The students, who would need accommodations from September 4- September 12, 2023, had been “hand picked for a unique experience at Cornell,” the administrator wrote in a series of messages included in VanCort’s lawsuit. The group had been fully vetted, and would be accompanied by an advisor from their school back home, the suit says.
“Cornell stated there were ‘no concerns regarding [the students’] integrity,’” the lawsuit contends.
Relying on Cornell’s promises and Airbnb’s “host damage protection” guarantee, VanCort gladly turned over the keys to her house for the agreed-upon rental period.
All told, VanCort estimates the cost of the damage, along with lost opportunities to rent her home, at more than $180,000, according to her lawsuit.
“To date, [Cornell and Airbnb] have failed and refused to reimburse [VanCort] for her damages and lost business income,” the lawsuit states.
Beyond the financial burden, the situation has caused VanCort no small amount of emotional stress, she said. She has spent countless hours going back and forth with Cornell and customer service reps at Airbnb in an attempt to be made whole, without any success.
“It is possible that as this moves up the chain at Airbnb a fair resolution could still happen,” VanCort told The Independent. “At this point, however, I am feeling pretty discouraged.”
VanCort is demanding a total of $540,000 — $180,000 from Cornell for negligence, and $360,000 from Airbnb for breach of contract and failure to indemnify for her damages.
