Prepare for Advocacy Day | Racial Disparities in PPP… and Recovery

In this Must Know… 

Join our Advocacy Day Prep Session on Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at 2:00pm PT to learn about the policies and issues that we’ll be promoting the following week.

With the huge, historic budget surplus and other money coming into the state for small businesses, we’ll be pushing for money for CDFIs, street vendors, commercial rent relief, and thanking our legislators for historic investments in small business.

We will provide you with talking points and tips on meeting with legislators.
And if you haven’t yet registered for Advocacy Day on June 8, what are you waiting for?

A recent investigative report by Reveal and the LA Times found that, across the nation, PPP loans were disbursed to White-owned businesses at a much higher rate than BIPOC-owned businesses. In the LA area, for example, “businesses in majority-White areas received loans at twice the rate that majority-Latinx tracts received, one and a half times the rate of businesses in majority-Black areas and 1.2 times the rate in Asian areas.”

Another report found that, of those that did receive PPP loans, Black-owned businesses were far less prepared to deal with the impact of the pandemic and CDFIs played a huge role in helping them apply and get approval for those loans.

Despite the clear racial disparities (as shown above) in access to capital from government programs, a new survey from Reimagine Main Street found that Black and Hispanic business owners are among the most optimistic about the future of their businesses and the overall economy. 

Women business owners, however, and especially those over 50, expressed lower confidence and predicted a slower recovery. Read all the survey highlights here.