By: Politico

Thousands of Democrats will swarm into Denver next week for the party’s national convention, and hotels in the city have been booked for months.

But for $65 a night, Denver resident Erin Efaw will give up her bedroom for you. She might even serve you breakfast.

"I figured it was cheaper than a hotel, cheaper than a bed and breakfast," said Efaw, 35, who plans to sleep on the couch if her room rents. "It’s maybe a little more expensive than a hostel, but I figured I’d be giving up my actual room for someone rather than putting them on the couch, so they could have some privacy. That seemed about what it should be worth for me to be kicked out of my room and for me to keep things clean."

Efaw is one of hundreds of residents in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul — which will host the Republicans the following week — who are renting out their private homes to convention-goers. She’s advertised her place on the free Internet classifieds website, Craigslist.com, and on AirBed & Breakfast, a website that pairs couch surfers with potential hosts.

Airbedandbreakfast.com formally launched last week, and so far has almost 800 listings in Denver for the Democratic convention week and about 100 in Minneapolis-St. Paul for the GOP.

Company co-founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia said they came up with the idea for the website last October, when a design convention came to their hometown of San Francisco. They ran a test of the site for the South by Southwest music festival last March in Austin, Texas, but matching up people with accommodations for the political conventions is the first large-scale operation for the site.

The two won’t say how many people have made convention reservations through their site so far, but "the turnout has been pretty significant," Chesky said. The site is addressing a major need in Denver — about 75,000 people are expected to attend Barack Obama’s speech at the Denver Broncos’ Invesco Field on the final night of the convention.

"When Obama announced he was speaking in a 75,000-seat arena, and there’s only 40,000 hotel rooms in Denver, the math just really worked in our favor," Chesky said. "And I think the local residents, when they heard on the news that all these tens of thousands of extra people were coming to Denver and then they heard about site like ours, they just jumped at the opportunity."

Although many individuals are scouring the Web on their own for accommodations, some political groups are taking matters into their own hands by calling for couches and spare bedrooms within their organizations.

The Campaign for Liberty, a group that grew out of Ron Paul’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination, has asked supporters in the Twin Cities to open up their homes. The organization is mostly using Craigslist to set up housing for members who are attending the Rally for the Republic, an all-day event on Sept. 2 in Minneapolis that coincides with the Republican National Convention.

"We were looking at that as a cheaper alternative for people coming in from out of town," said Marianne Stebbins, Minnesota logistics coordinator for the group and a former Paul staffer. "We were going to set up a website itself, but there’s been so much other stuff to be done that we decided to go with existing technology on Craigslist."

Progressive Future, a left-leaning grass-roots political organization, also is asking its members to open up space for couch surfers — but not for the national conventions. The group, which endorsed Obama this week, is sending out staffers to seven states across the country to campaign for the Democratic nominee until Election Day.

"Some of them are traveling to places where they don’t have friends and family members, so we’ve asked our membership to step up and help alleviate cost and hassle of finding a place to live for a few months," said Adam Lioz, program director for the Colorado-based organization. "Several folks were willing to put folks up for the whole time, but even if it’s just a week or two while they hit the ground and look for place, that’s helpful, too."

Whitney McFerron reports for Northwestern University’s Medill News Service. Medill News Service is partnering with Campus Politico for the 2008 elections.

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