I would imagine it would be a lot easier for civilians to host scooter waypoints at their residence. Bike docks seem like more effort, I can't seem them being a popular option for homes. At scale, the idea is that half of the houses in a neighborhood would host hubs for scooters. At high hub densities, the distinction between docked and dockless becomes negligible, however the hub solution has the added benefit of people not leaving vehicles at random locations.
I don't understand why you think anyone would do this, but I am also not sure that it would be any more legal to run a scooter rental hub at most homes than it is to put a pile of scooters on the sidewalk.
Sorry, why do you think it's a rental hub? It's not a rental hub, you're simply giving Bird riders consent to use your property to drop their scooters off (as opposed to them dropping their scooters off on a random person's property, which bypasses consent and is far worse). All of the rental happens between Bird and the rider, you're just giving people permission to leave scooters on your lawn. It's an opt-in rather than opt-out system, which is how it should be.
It is a hub for people to collect rental bikes. You are giving people permission to use your private property only if they have a specific commercial relationship with a business that you also have a specific commercial relationship to, which has a lot of differences to residential use. I'm not an expert, but I'd be pretty stunned if e.g a standard home insurance policy was willing to cover you under those circumstances.
