In the September 12, 2012 issue of The Toronto Star there is a story about the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) raising the annual rental fee by churches as much as 800%. One church of 60 members was paying $5,673/year for rent – it was notified in August that its rent is now set at $44,695/year! Needless to say, the church is looking for another place to rent.
The story raises some concern and there remains ambiguity. On the one hand, we want to give the TDSB the benefit of the doubt that it simply made a business decision to raise the rent to cover its losses from government cutbacks. On the other hand, we note that the TDSB re-classified faith groups from the "non-profit" to the "profit" category – thereby allowing for the market-rate rents. That is curious given that church groups are factually non-profit.
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