Our Final Assignment — How Can We Mitigate Commercial Gentrification?
As mentioned in my previous blog post, our class had the opportunity to write a report for the United Way Greater Toronto for our final assignment. My group was tasked with answering the following question: “What municipal or provincial tax reforms have the greatest potential for mitigating commercial gentrification?”
I didn’t really know much when it came to commercial gentrification and conducting research for this paper highlighted two main findings:
- There aren’t many places that have tax policies in place with the sole purpose of mitigating commercial gentrification
- Mitigating commercial gentrification is extremely complex and nuanced
My group initially had a hard time researching policies that were successful but were ultimately able to find three policy options that were successfully implemented elsewhere:
- Create a new property tax subclass for small local businesses
In Toronto, the Creative Co-Location Facilities Property Tax Subclass was established by City Council and the Province of Ontario in 2018 to support the affordability and sustainability of cultural and creative spaces in Toronto
2. Reduce commercial property taxes and rebalance commercial and residential property taxes
In Alberta, City Council unanimously voted to cut $60 million from its 2019 budget and to pull $70.9 million from the City’s reserves to reduce the tax increase by 10% in June 2019 as a result of significant increases in property tax assessments for suburban businesses
3. Encourage owner occupancy
New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have a wide variety of funding opportunities for small businesses, primarily due to the federal investment tax credits available to Atlantic Canada
Although these options are all feasible and have been implemented successfully elsewhere, we found that implementing these policies will be extremely challenging. Although these reforms would benefit the GGM, these policies are a hard sell — both politically and financially. How can you justify implementing a policy that will benefit a subset of the population and likely negatively affect others? It makes you think — what can be done to mitigate commercial mitigation?
____
On a side note, and to end my final blog post — Urban Policy has been my favourite course throughout this degree. It made me think of issues (like commercial gentrification) that I failed to think about prior to taking this course. It also showed me how interesting urban policy is and what careers are available to us urban policy enthusiasts. Thank you Gabriel Eidelman for making this course so interesting and enjoyable!
