WRITTEN TESTIMONY TO NYC CITY COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
January 19, 2020
SBS’s Latest Covid-Relief Program Has Missed the Mark Again for Manhattan’s Chinatown
Proposed program amendments from Think!Chinatown
The NYC Low and Moderate Income (LMI) Storefront Loan program has omitted coverage of the historic working-class core of Chinatown. By using zip codes as the sole indicator of geographic eligibility for this program, NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) has overlooked struggling LMI neighborhoods that happen to be adjacent to high-income areas. The zip code 10013 includes the historic working-class core of Chinatown along with high-income areas such as Tribeca, SoHo, and NoLita. Thus, businesses in zip code 10013 do not qualify for the LMI Storefront Loan program. Businesses on Mott, Elizabeth, Mulberry, Baxter Streets south of Broome, Canal St west of Bowery, the west side of the Bowery, Bayard, Pell, Mosco, and Doyers Streets are left out of this relief program because eligibility is based only on zip codes. Just as SBS’s quickly depleted NYC Employee Retention Grant program failed to serve Chinatown, the NYC LMI Storefront Loan program is again leaving Chinatown behind.
A press release from the Office of the Mayor on Nov. 25 announced, “City Launches Small Business Supports for Hard-Hit Low and Moderate Income (LMI) Communities” and identified the urgent needs among minority-owned businesses:
“Now more than ever, Black, Latinx, and Asian businesses are struggling with access to capital. The launch of these programs is a targeted approach to provide relief efforts in communities that need it most,” said Jonnel Doris, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services.
“Advancing a strong recovery means providing the communities hardest hit by COVID-19 with the resources they need to rebuild,” said James Patchett, president, and CEO of New York City Economic Development Corporation. “Our minority-owned businesses were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and their resurgence is key to the City’s long-term success…”
It is devastating to see that a program designed to target support towards minority-owned businesses in LMI areas, hit hard by COVID-19, excludes one of the hardest-hit communities-- Manhattan’s Chinatown-- which early on suffered the fallout of xenophobia against Asian Americans, even before the general economic and public health crises hit NYC. Hoping that the exclusion of impacted Chinatown businesses was just an administrative error that could be quickly rectified, Think!Chinatown director Yin Kong met (via video conference) with various SBS staffers to explain the problems with the zip code eligibility criteria, and proposed that SBS include businesses within the area serviced by the Chinatown BID-- a catchment area already recognized under other SBS programs. Think!Chinatown has invested the time to partake in several more meetings with SBS staffers, including two group meetings with the Commissioner as part of the “Chinatown Task Force,” contributed to the open letter written by State Assemblymember Niou, contributed to the resolution written by CB3, and spent countless hours discussing this issue with various Chinatown community members and stakeholders. Despite all of our collective efforts, the Chinatown community’s plea to be included in the NYC LMI Storefront Loan program; SBS has not found a solution to direct any of the $35 Million lending capital for interest free loans to Chinatown 10013 or 10038. We do acknowledge the addition of 10013 and 10038 to the “Interest Rate Reduction Grant” program for existing loans through our local CDFI Renaissance. This has alleviated the interest burden of a dozen or so businesses, but has not solved the real issue of bringing in necessary lending capital through our CDFI.
Since the launch of the NYC LMI Storefront Loan program Nov 30, 2020, we have been advocating to amend the eligibility criteria for the NYC LMI Storefront Loan program to include all storefronts located in census tracts designated as low or moderate income, so that all deserving businesses and communities get a fair shot to apply. We recognize that this first-come, first-served program of finite funding at this point will not be able to serve our community and we wish for the City Council to acknowledge this failure in the City’s relief program.
Lack of equal access to relief programs only exacerbates the challenges facing neighborhoods like Chinatown. In our collective goal of moving towards equitable access for immigrant communities and communities of color we propose focus in these areas:
Funding for relief programs such as interest free loans should be dispersed by local CDFIs. Beyond empowering them with capital for loans, our CDFIs should be funded to conduct in-language outreach for relief programs. Our CDFIs are set up to understand community specific needs, both in language capacity and also business practices. These are the entities that need to be empowered to disperse these programs, rather than large financial entities based outside of the City.
Discontinue the use of zip codes as an indicator of need or eligibility criterion in future relief programs. More nuanced indicators such as census tract data must be used to give all deserving communities a fair shot.
Effective outreach in Chinatown should include these elements: bilingual printed materials, press conferences geared to Chinese language newspapers, segments on Chinese language radio shows, along with door to door outreach from. It’s a lot of work, but for a program to touch down in immigrant neighborhoods to reach the most vulnerable businesses a program is intended to support, a collaborative outreach strategy that includes community partners is essential to overcome language and cultural barriers.
Discontinue the use of the first come first serve approach. Yes, we understand relief is needed quickly, but in-language outreach takes time. Phases or rounds of applications would result in a more equitable distribution of resources.
Seek and incorporate feedback from the communities that SBS aims to serve in the development phase of the program. We understand that SBS is moving fast in uncharted territory. That is why, more than ever, we hope SBS will solicit and incorporate guidance from community partners to improve its programs while these programs are still in development, so we can avoid future unintended exclusions.
Require SBS to build a standard operating procedure for working with vulnerable neighborhoods that will continue through administrations to come. As exclusion for relief programs has been a repeated issue, we need to ensure future administrations will not repeat this exclusionary practices such as defaulting back to using zip codes. We need to move forward with all the input that the Chinatown Task Force has expended the human resource to gather, rather than watch this repeat in the next administration.
SBS has acknowledged zipcodes are not a good indicator of need for relief programs and has verbally agreed to working towards eliminating the use of zipcodes in the future as an indicator of need, but this is not enough. We need to ensure that neighborhoods like ours are better represented in the decision making process in the formation of these relief programs. The current process and points of representation have shown gross failure.
Thank you for your service in this difficult time,
Yin Kong, Director of Think!Chinatown
邝海音, 心目華埠
About Think!Chinatown
Think!Chinatown is a nonprofit organization based in Manhattan’s Chinatown working at the intersection of storytelling, the arts, and neighborhood engagement. We believe the process of listening, reflecting & celebrating builds the community cohesion and trust necessary to take on larger neighborhood issues. Our aim is to overcome barriers of community organizing where socio-economic factors, language, and cultural barriers create challenges for immigrant communities’ autonomy to make decisions in their own neighborhood. We’ve built Think!Chinatown to push from within our neighborhood to shape better policies and programs for our communities. Learn more at www.thinkchinatown.org