Ailing businesses to receive loans, grants from city
“I putting spent together two hours an application, and heard back the next day.”
Alvin Yu, boba stand owner
In a fresh effort to lessen the local damage from the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, San Francisco city leaders Thursday announced a new set of relief and — down the road — recovery efforts aimed at the city’s business sector.
The immediate boost would come from $10 million in grants and lowinterest loans to small businesses, an effort that builds on initiatives launched in March as concerns about the coronavirus took hold. On a more longterm basis, an “economic recovery task force” will begin meeting next week, with leadership from the private sector as well as City Hall.
“The impact that this pandemic is having is severe to not just public health, but also our local economy and people’s livelihoods,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “We know that there is much more to be done over the coming weeks and months.”
The economic strain can be measured not only by the boardedup storefronts seen throughout the city, but the demand shown for the funds made available so far.
On March 11, Breed earmarked $1 million to be used for grants of no more than $10,000 to help businesses of five employees or fewer. That “resiliency fund” has already attracted more than 2,000 applicants.
One was Alvin Yu, who received an $8,000 grant on March 31 to help tide things over at Steep Creamery — his pair of boba and icecreamroll stands popular with tech workers in the blocks near South Park.
“My wife told me about the grant at 10:30 one evening. I spent two hours putting together an application, and heard back the next day,” Yu said, whose outposts are closed indefinitely. “It was my first time ever reaching out to the city.”
The $10 million setaside announced Thursday includes $1 million to augment the fund that Yu and others have drawn from. The remainder will be used to create a new source of emergency business loans.
The loans will be interestfree, in amounts of up to $50,000. Like the grants, they’re reserved for businesses where an owner has no more than four employees and less than $2.5 million in gross receipts.
The task force is more aspirational — seeking, in the words of the press release announcing it, to “lay the groundwork for economic recovery once the city has made meaningful progress containing COVID19.”
It will begin meeting next week, with cochairs that include two city officials — Assessor Carmen Chu and Treasurer José Cisneros — as well as Chamber of Commerce CEO Rodney Fong and Rudy Gonzalez, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council.
In a show of political unity, the task force was announced jointly by Breed and Norman Yee, president of the Board of Supervisors.
“We simply cannot afford to wait in preparing for what we know will be a difficult recovery,” Yee said in a statement. “This global outbreak has changed our world and how we function in it.”
These initiatives are part of a larger effort to soften the economic blow of recent events. The last few weeks have also seen the deferral of business taxes and various licensing fees, plus a $2.5 million relief fund for arts organizations.