rENTER

Oct 1

A platform for short-term commercial space rentals

By: Charlotte Belot and Connor Cordingley

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated problems in our society, such as social inequality, housing precarity, and food insecurity. For our main streets, this means an uptick in already-high commercial vacancies. This has been especially acute in Montreal, where lively downtown shopping streets, already showing signs of chronic vacancies were almost completely deserted during the lockdown phase of our COVID-19 response. This necessary public health measure emptied the streets, stripping many businesses of their customers and revenue and leaving them unable to keep up with their often-exorbitant monthly rents. This has led to the shuttering and vacancy of a significant number of storefronts, hurting the liveliness of these vital corridors during the recovery period.

The concept for rENTER comes from two ideas: the desire to see the vacant commercial spaces in Canadian cities put back to use, and a wish to connect local people to short-term commercial spaces that fit their business ideas. These spaces could be used as pop-up boutiques, seasonal markets, art installations, galleries, open-air bars, and temporary workspaces. They could also serve local community organizations as food banks or legal clinics for those facing eviction. While under ordinary circumstances, landlords would prefer the security of a long-term tenant, these short-term uses could be valuable sources of stop-gap revenue. The rENTER platform will help to fill empty storefronts, keeping main streets dynamic and vibrant, as well as providing low-risk and high-traffic spaces to people piloting new businesses and offering vital services.

Details:

Budget: A consortium of software developers, either within the government or contracted from the private or non-profit sector will be required to build and implement this platform. Admittedly, the financial requirements of this project are difficult to estimate without a background in application development. Building a web and mobile platform is a time- and skills-intensive project. However, once the platform is complete, the cost of running it becomes relatively nominal. We propose a competitive tender process to maximize cost-effectiveness.

Materials and Fabrication: rENTER would be a web and mobile marketplace application structured similarly to Airbnb, but for commercial spaces instead of housing.

Installation and Other Services: Landlords and tenants will register as hosts to rent out unused spaces, providing the supply of rentals. For landlords, this may help to bridge the gap in revenue between long-term rents. For tenants, this would be a form of sublet that could help to supplement their revenue outside of their regular business hours. Spaces will be categorized according to their possible uses. Potential hosts and their spaces will be subject to a municipal approval process, which includes an evaluation of the viability of their space, limits on rental rates in order to preserve affordability, and proof that they are unable to find a long-term tenant. Signup for the platform will be on a voluntary basis, and thus would not require a municipality to have comprehensive data on current commercial vacancies. Management of the platform is meant to occur at the municipal level, with each municipality licensing the software and administering it locally. This strategy is preferred, first, because municipalities are ideally positioned to respond to their local communities’ unique needs, and second, because management should be kept within the public sphere to preserve a non-profit mission and maximize the affordability of rentals