New West city councillor motions to regulate commercial rent

A New Westminster city councillor is asking the province to start regulating commercial rental rates to help small businesses stay afloat.

Coun. Tasha Henderson says a motion introduced Monday calls for a framework for caps on extreme increases and tools to reduce vacancy-driven speculation.

John Hughes, owner of Groove Cat Books and Records in New Westminster, says his biggest problem are the triple-net lease rules — the system that allows commercial landlords to pass on the costs of property taxes or other fees to tenants.

“There’s no way that we have to manage or mitigate these kinds of responsibilities for having to pay the landlord’s property tax. And we would like for the landlord to take care of their own property tax,” said Hughes.

He says it’s impossible to predict when those invoices are going to arrive in the mail and he wants the rules for commercial landlords brought in line with the ones for residential landlords.

“Any residence I’ve ever lived in where I’ve had to rent, it’s never been the case where I was responsible for paying maintenance and property tax on top of rent. Rent was the rent was the rent. And so if taxes went up, the landlord handled that, and sometimes that was reflected in rent increases, but those are controlled. At the the level of commercial properties, that’s not the case,” Hughes explained.

He says he doesn’t think it’s fair for landlords to download those additional costs onto their tenants.

Without action on the cost of commercial rentals, Hughes says, it’s going to be very difficult for small businesses to survive on the Lower Mainland.

“It’s time to bring some balance back to the system and keep our local businesses where they belong,” said Henderson.

She says the motion will be debated in council on June 9.