{"id":6508,"date":"2020-07-29T21:46:04","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T21:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2020\/07\/29\/painful-process-riocan-ceo-critical-of-ottawas-rent-assistance-program\/"},"modified":"2020-07-29T21:46:04","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T21:46:04","slug":"painful-process-riocan-ceo-critical-of-ottawas-rent-assistance-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2020\/07\/29\/painful-process-riocan-ceo-critical-of-ottawas-rent-assistance-program\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Painful&#8217; process: RioCan CEO critical of Ottawa&#8217;s rent assistance program"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<h2 class=\"visually-hidden\">Article content continued<\/h2>\n<section aria-labelledby=\"moreTopicLabel\" class=\"more-topic\">\n<h2 class=\"more-topic__title\" id=\"moreTopicLabel\">More On This Topic<\/h2>\n<p><button aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"more-topic__button-prev\" tabindex=\"-1\" title=\"previous\" type=\"button\"\/><button aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"more-topic__button-next\" tabindex=\"-1\" title=\"next\" type=\"button\"\/><\/section>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">For the months of April, May and June, RioCan collected 73.3 per cent of its rent on average \u2014 7.7 per cent of rent was deferred with a definitive payment schedule, and 6.4 per cent of total rent remains to be collected. The company wrote off 6.8 per cent of rent, or $9.2 million, as bad debt and is expecting to receive $9.9 million (or 5.8 per cent of total rent) from the federal government\u2019s <span class=\"st\">Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance<\/span> (CECRA) program.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This has been the most unusual quarter in my 26 years of being CEO<\/p>\n<p>Ed Sonshine<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">On the call, Sonshine criticized the CECRA program, calling it a \u201cpainful, painful application process.\u201d He added that very few of RioCan\u2019s tenants actually qualified for the program because the qualification criteria, at least in the months of May and June, were that the business had to lose 70 per cent of sales.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Rent collection, however, improved significantly in July to 85 per cent, according to RioCan\u2019s financials.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">Sonshine said he suspects that number will increase as RioCan\u2019s government tenants usually pay rent only at the end of the month. He provided some guidance to analysts on the call, estimating rent collection of more than 90 per cent on average, if the country does not go back into full lockdown mode.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400;\">\u201cThe types of tenants that did not pay rent were largely fashion tenants. But we are confident in the collectability of most or all of that rent because for many of them, their only choice is to go into creditor protection,\u201d Sonshine said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/financialpost.com\/real-estate\/property-post\/painful-process-riocan-ceo-critical-of-ottawas-rent-assistance-program-as-retail-landlord-suffers-350m-loss\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article content continued More On This Topic For the months of April, May and June, RioCan collected 73.3 per cent of its rent on average \u2014 7.7 per cent of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/6509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}