Chair Thomas-Henry questions Khan on commercial lease renewal rate data and vacancy tracking
Thomas-Henry asks whether SBS tracks lease renewal rates citywide. Khan says SBS only has data from businesses in their program, not citywide renewal rates, but does track citywide occupancy and vacancy rates and uses neighborhood development grants to address hotspot areas.
One more question.
Does SBS currently have any data around lease renewal rates for commercial tenants?
Like currently, are you tracking what rates are for tenants across all five boroughs?
We don't get access to data from businesses on the status of their lease
unless they're working with us in our program, and then they work with us on renewing the lease or negotiating with the landlord.
We're very helpful sometimes helping businesses renegotiate some terms of their lease if they end up in a difficult situation.
It was particularly common during COVID, and we're able to help save businesses thousands of dollars in back rent by renegotiating said leases.
So the data we get on renewals is limited to the data that businesses are willing to share and provide us during casework.
of what the businesses in themselves are sharing?
Are you seeing any trends in different neighborhoods?
Like similar to if you're renting apartments, there's certain market rate apartments depending on the neighborhood.
Are you seeing those same particular trends as it relates to businesses?
So we have and we analyze the citywide directory of database of storefront occupancy and vacancy.
It doesn't get us to the level of detail that would potentially let us know the implications on lease renewals and whether businesses are not getting their lease renewals.
They're choosing not to renew because of the cost of the lease.
That data doesn't currently exist, and there is no public data or data that businesses voluntarily share that provides that clarity.
But we do have general citywide occupancy vacancy rates that's tracked citywide, and that's how we get a sense of what the market is looking like in those particular neighborhoods where we know there's hotspots of prolonged and persistent
vacancy, sometimes chronic vacancy.
And we leverage the neighborhood development grants that we issue, the $8.4 million, to provide some mitigation and support to those neighborhoods when there's applications from those communities.
Okay.
I have other questions, but I will turn it over to Councilmember Brewer to ask.