Sacramento to offer forgivable loans to small businesses impacted by COVID. Who can apply?
The Sacramento City Council is offering forgivable loans of up to $25,000 to small businesses and nonprofits affected by the coronavirus crisis.
The council approved the $10 million Small Business Recovery Program on Tuesday night. The city is promising that at least 75 percent of the loans will go to businesses in economically disadvantaged areas.
“This sends the right signal to our business community that help is on the way,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said.
The money comes from the $89 million in federal coroanvirus stimulus funds the city received from the CARES Act.
To apply, businesses must be located in the city and must have had 25 or fewer employees as of March 1, according to a blog post from the mayor’s office. City staff will favor longtime businesses and those owned by people with low to moderate incomes.
Applications will be on the city’s website starting June 29, said Jennifer Singer, a city spokeswoman. The city plans to begin outreach soon and businesses could start receiving their loans in early August.
The loans will be forgivable after one year if the business remains open, has a business plan and has retained 75 percent of the jobs it had in March 2020, the blog said.
This is the second time the city has offered a coroanvirus small business loan program. The city quickly offered $1 million in zero-interest small business loans in March, but very few of them were granted to restaurants in underserved neighborhoods, Capitol Public Radio reported.
For example, no restaurants in Little Saigon along Stockton Boulevard received a loan in the first round. Banquet halls and catering businesses there, like Happy Garden, have been hit especially hard due to the virus because they rely heavily on events, Councilman Steve Hansen said.
This time will be different, council members and staff said Tuesday.
“City staff will get the word out well in advance of the application deadline by working with ethnic chambers, business improvement districts and community groups around the city,” the blog post said.
The council has so far allocated about $34 million of the CARES money, leaving it with about $55 million still left to spend, the blog post said.
Steinberg asked the Measure U Community Advisory Committee to help determine how to spend the rest of the CARES money. It’s unclear if the commission will take him up on that offer.
The commission was put in place to help the city decide how to best to spend the Measure U sales tax money voters approved in 2018 for equitable economic development projects to uplift underserved neighborhoods. But when the virus hit, the city used that money for core city services instead.
In other business, Hansen and Councilman Eric Guerra said they want the city to extend the residential eviction moratorium it enacted in March in response to the virus. The item is expected to be on a future council agenda. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide residential eviction moratorium is currently set to expire July 28.
This story was originally published June 17, 2020 at 2:05 PM.
