‘We were shocked:’ Why Canadian business owners are sounding alarms over skyrocketing rent

globalnews.ca:

Better Way Alliance is a group of Canadian businesses advocating for better employer standards and, more recently, for regulations around commercial rent increases.Whereas many residential rental units have limits on how much landlords can increase rent each year, commercial spaces do not.The Better Ways Alliance says the lack of regulations leads to many small businesses facing significant increases when renewing their lease.“The survey that we put out last year indicated that almost 75 per cent of businesses have gone through a 10-per cent or greater rent increase at one time. If you think of that from a residential perspective, you’ve got protections generally against that kind of increase, but this is just an increase that businesses are expected to make,” says Aaron Binder, director at the Better Way Alliance.“These rent increases and disputes with landlords are not a pandemic thing.

They’ve been going on for decades, but certainly, the pandemic accelerated a lot of these issues.”Binder says following the pandemic, many business owners are in more debt now than ever before, and when you throw a large rent increase on top of that, they are forced to either find a cheaper option or, more likely, close.“Local businesses tend to create jobs that do pay more and do offer benefits. We have to do this to stay competitive with larger companies.