ricochet
public-interest journalism
Over the course of 2023, Ricochet dove deep into coverage of Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms, and their impact on the housing crisis.
The investigation kicked off in March, in the wake of a deadly fire in Old Montreal that killed seven people. Ricochet was the first to identify the man operating an illegal Airbnb network out of the building that burned, tied the building’s owner to the scheme and exposed the nature of this new, and as yet unreported, type of property scam. In the wake of the fire there was a flurry of new legislation, lawsuits and policy changes seeking to crack down on illegal short-term rentals.
We assembled a multi-outlet, multi-lingual team that dug deep into the networks fueling the illegal short-term rental market in Canada, exposed wrongdoing, and drove policy change in multiple jurisdictions.
