Small Business Rent Relief Grant Press Webinar

the l.a county small business rent relief grant press conference at this time all participants are in a listen only mode later we will conduct a question and answer session if you have a question please raise your hand by clicking on the hand icon or send a chat to the host to be placed in queue if you should require assistance during the call please message the event host directly i would now like to turn the conference over to los angeles county development authority executive director mr emilio salas mr salas please go ahead thank you very much and good morning everyone um as a stated my name is emilio salas i'm the executive director of the los angeles county development authority i want to thank members of the press and the public for joining us today for the small business rent relief grant press webinar uh before i introduce uh supervisor mitchell i just want to say a few brief words about the grant program itself last month our board of supervisors approved a motion that was authored by supervisor solis and co-authored by supervisor mitchell that allocated up to 7.5 million dollars in american rescue plan act funds for the creation of the small business rent relief grant that will provide rental assistance to small businesses with rental debt due to the pandemic now the small business rent relief grant project will provide up to forty thousand dollars to help businesses cover rent that became a back that became due as far back i'm sorry as march 4th of 2020 the program is scheduled to launch this wednesday november 17th at 8 a.m and will be closing the following wednesday november 24th at 5 p.m

now it's important to note that this program will be available to small businesses that are located in the unincorporated areas of the county it's also important to note that this board was very intentional in targeting this assistance to what we refer to as micro businesses those smallest of small businesses now these might these micro businesses face many of the same systemic disadvantages as do individuals um within their marginalized communities but they've not received the same relief and protections afforded to renters and consumers and has been has been widely reported even well-meaning small business relief programs have not reached or have been insufficient to help many of these small businesses the entrepreneurs that operate these small businesses took the risk of investing in their community and now find themselves at risk of having the pandemic destroy the basic financial stability of their families it's also no secret that rent debt is a major source of tension between tenants and landlords in many cases smaller commercial tenants face pressures and desperation similar to that of residential tenants and far too many of these businesses face the daunting challenge of trying to stay afloat while having this insurmountable rent debt hanging over their heads with this in mind the small business rent relief grant program was created and designed to assist small businesses most in need and i'm proud to say that they'll utilize an equity lens to identify communities of highest need i want to thank our board for giving the lacda the opportunity to launch this grant and i'm proud to introduce the co-author of this motion a staunch supporter of the my uh the small micro business community supervisor holly j mitchell supervisor mitchell happy monday emilio and thank you very much for that generous introduction i'm really excited to participate today because this is um in my belief the role government should and must play to support our small employers our micro businesses particularly incorporated areas of the county so i just want to emphasize because this is what makes me most nervous emilio people have one week to apply and most um micro businesses i know are so busy keeping the doors open of their brick and mortar facility that they rarely lift their head up to take the time to understand what resources are available to them so that's why you our media partners are so critical you've got to help us help us help the micro businesses application opens wednesday they've got one week and so we need you to do multiple stories we need you to really help us get the word out um it's also important i think in your reporting as emilio said it's up to forty thousand dollars um he talked about unincorporated micro businesses they must have brick and mortar located in unincorporated areas small businesses uh nine or fewer full-time equivalent employees uh have an annual gross revenue of no more than a million dollars so this really is uh truly when we say small business that's what we mean and these are the businesses i think are sometimes the hardest to reach it was my experience when i would hear from the chamber when the chamber was coming to lobby me in sacramento these were not the businesses they were often representing so it's going to be important that we get to our our ethnic chambers i'm in our specialized geographic area chambers i've got a great chamber in my district in culver city those are the folks that my staff will be reaching out to to place the call um again from my perspective this is exactly what government should be doing at a time such as this and we know as we talk about building back equitably the president has signed the bill today to build back better for the country my goal and vision at la county is that we build back equitably and this rent support program for small businesses and micro businesses is the perfect example of that so again to our media partners please help us get the word out folks have one week to apply starting wednesday i'm sure others will give you the phone number but i will do it just because folks want to apply maybe have questions area code 626 210 forty five hundred six two six two one zero forty five hundred and so you can hear from the agency leader emilio you can hear from the policy maker who co-authored the motion now let's hear from someone who this is going to directly benefit one of our small businesses very proud to introduce our next speaker catherine o'cron of the jekyll jacal learning center who is a recipient of a cares act funded grant thank you for joining us catherine thank you very much for that introduction again my name is katherine o'kern the program director of jacqueline learning center a child care center located near bruce cross and avalon area so we serve families that live in compton los angeles carson gardena and hawthorne area and i would like to thank the program for assisting us during these difficult times with that grant that grant was very helpful and we appreciate that generosity that helped us to maintain all our staff during the pandemic until now we have been able to continue running our child care facility in a safe and healthy environment through this grant we have been able to maintain our staff like i said with smaller class sizes because because of the pandemic we are expected to have smaller groups with smaller group of adults around them so we were able to maintain all staff keep our class sizes smaller and that also helped with that prevention of the spread of covet thankfully no staff no child has tested positive from then until now because of all these measures and the assistance of this grant also we have been able to purchase plexi glasses to divide tables during activities and also practice social distance by wearing masks and frequent hand wash and materials that are readily available to prevent the spread of covet we have been able to purchase individualized learning materials and have every child's name labeled on a sterilized container with lids to avoid cross-contamination and toys being used individually by the children and we it after each use through this grant we have been able to cut be current and up to date with our rent and the commercial use of building and all utilities so we are very grateful and we encourage all to apply for this grant the staff is helpful and readily available to assist we didn't have any challenge during the process and they were readily available to respond through email or phone during the process so i encourage all to apply for the grant to sustain their businesses thank you very much for the opportunity thank you thank you emilio if i could just share catherine thank you so much and i hope that you're in a child care provider network that you can help us push this information out because your industry i think is the perfect applicant particularly when we recognize the need for child care across la county you know even before colette we were losing child care providers for a variety of reasons and so um the need far exceeds the supply and so if people like yourself that was a beautiful description of why this grant is valuable and how you were able to incorporate it into your business to keep your business thriving and children and your employees safe and so i think you are a perfect example of the kind of business that should and must apply and i hope that you will help us by reaching out to uh your fellow uh professionals in the early care and industry early care and education sector um and hoping that they will apply and have the same good positive results that you had thank you so much thank you very much for that opportunity thank you for that uh supervisor mitchell and uh miss okra and that that certainly was a great great testimonial and does speak about the effectiveness of these grant programs when they become available um you know we all heard about ppp right that the government launched early on but those those loans went to businesses that already had established relationships with banks larger businesses and quite frankly some of which probably didn't need uh that level of assistance so i'm very proud of our board to really be very very intentional about this particular grant program and the ones that we launched in the past that they were really meant to help those businesses that hadn't had access to any of these programs now in terms of the the grant program that was described earlier that's a great example of how these funds could just help a business get over that hump right to stay afloat and to do what's necessary to pivot this particular grant is very specific to rent right and um we've heard that you know right now very very small small businesses they've been able to stay afloat but now they've got this huge rent debt right that they know how in the world are they ever going to get caught up uh and pay back that rent and continue uh to stay afloat so that's what this is meant to do to provide that level of assistance and on the equity lens i mean it's something that i'm really really proud that our board really focuses on this issue because this is going to go to communities that have been impacted by kovat the most we're talking about places like florence firestone athens westmont east los angeles these are all communities that have had a disproportionate impact from covet and it's no different for the small businesses that operate there so there it's going to certainly focus on those areas so i'm very very proud that we were given that directive to make sure that that's where the assistance goes uh just to give you a couple of more details about the program itself to qualify a small business has to meet the definition of a small business which supervisor mitchell alluded to earlier no more than nine employees and gross revenues of less than a million dollars they also need to have been operating within the past 24 months in the places that we spoke about in unincorporated los angeles county they also need to demonstrate our gross revenue loss of at least 25 over the 12 month period and we're going to be very flexible in terms of how that's going to be documented we've noted that sometimes these qualifying measures provide obstacles we're going to work with every small business that applies that gets selected and working through that process the applications are going to be sorted by tier so we're going to be using an equity lens to identify different tiers starting with the highest need then that then high need moderately no need and low need and so forth but the vast majority of these funds are going to go to those communities that have the highest need according to that index and because there is 7.5 million dollars that isn't certainly going to meet the entire need we're going to uh have a lottery system to to create uh fairness for all of those that apply so folks don't have to worry about calling in uh you know at 801 and making sure that they get you know firsthand it's that's why we made it a long a week-long period so that folks at any of that in any time during that week can can apply and there will be a lottery system um and once these funds are exhausted there may be subsequent funds depending on how the rescue plan funds are disseminated uh but we know that these this particular program is going to be uh over subscribed but we certainly are going to be very intentional in getting it to those communities of highest need with that um we also provided information in terms of the website that is available for folks to apply there is also a telephone number that supervisor mitchell gave out earlier that folks can call to apply as well and there will also be a website where folks can ask questions regarding the grant program we certainly are going to rely very heavily on the press to put the word out there um to help us in that regard and we'll conduct as many one-on-one interviews as are necessary as well to make sure in addition to doing some local marketing efforts uh to make sure that the word gets out to those communities with that that concludes um our presentation and i am now here joined with my colleague carolina romo who i want to thank who was a person that worked tirelessly to make sure that she designed a program that met the requirements and and the desires that the board put forth before us uh and and really worked around the clock to make sure that we launched this program so we are available to take your questions um and we will now open it up to the press to uh to provide those questions ladies and gentlemen if you wish to ask a question please raise your hand using the hand icon or send the host to chat with your name and outlet to be placed in queue as a courtesy to other reporters and to allow for ample time for questions please limit yourselves to one to two questions per reporter one moment please for our first question our first question comes from the line of claudia shaw claudia your line is unmuted please go ahead thank you very much thank you very much for this information for the opportunity i work with the small business development center the fbdc's so i just wanted to know we have the maximum it has to be 40 000 but do you have like a minimum that they owe in rent so they can apply for this and does it matter if they just started owing this money two months ago or one month ago instead of a year ago great questions uh and yes there there are there is a minimum of 5 000 right so it's between 5 000 up to 40 000 and it could be anywhere within the time period of march 4th 2020 moving forward to the present so if it just occurred two or three months ago they would be eligible and i want to turn it over to carolina who is my expert to make sure i don't misspeak on any of these items thanks emilia you are correct our minimum is five thousand dollars and they could have fallen into arrears with rent a month ago and still apply all is well there thank you our next question comes from the line of david wagner with kpcc david your line is unmuted please go ahead thank you um i'm curious how many businesses do you expect to help before funds run out i mean do you have an estimate or a range of the number of businesses you think you'll be able to assist before these funds run out it's really difficult to say because of the range of the grant right when you look at a range of 5000 to 40 000 uh it depends on where the majority of the grantee applications will lie but there will be hundreds of businesses that will potentially receive assistance again depending on on the on the amount requested thank you and as a reminder members of the media if you would like to ask a question please raise your hand using the hand icon or send the host to chat with your name and outlet to be placed in queue one moment please while we wait for questions to queue and while we're waiting may i ask a clarifying question sure so emilio let let's say because we've got a a one week window of time um if for whatever reason there are still funds available in the program after the week after we go through our process could we reopen it how would we handle that situation yes we've been preparing for that uh in the event that additional funds uh are allocated and caroline i'd like to turn that to you to see how the uh sure so when we developed this application portal supervisor we really went out of our way to make it as simple as possible and also available for folks to be able to apply using their mobile devices for those that may not have formal computers so you can apply online so what we would probably do is if we do not get enough applications or we get additional funding we can simply just open up another round uh using the same equity principles and deploy the funds that way excellent great news thank you thank you and we do have a follow-up question from david wagner david your line is unmuted please go ahead hey uh thanks for taking another question um uh so yeah just two two things um yeah in follow-up to the last question you're expecting to help hundreds of businesses so hundreds would be accurate not uh thousands not a different um figure and then uh so that's just a quick follow-up the other question i had is uh you mentioned a lottery system and i wonder if you can uh explain a little bit more what that lottery system will do will it choose who gets funded whose application gets processed first what what exactly will the lottery accomplish okay i'll answer the first part of the question and then i'll turn the second part on the lottery over to carolina so that is correct it will be hundreds of businesses and again that is with the this uh initial allocation of 7.5 million dollars if there are additional funds that are allocated we will then certainly be able to help additional uh businesses um if you recall they uh harkening back to residential rent relief we started with 10 million dollars under cares it eventually expanded to over 130 million dollars and then eventually the state provided additional funds so we're hopeful that additional funds might become available and if so we can then broaden that because we know that the need is tremendous um now to the question in terms of the lottery system i'll turn that over to carolina thanks emilio so the way the lottery will work is once we receive all of the applications uh we will be using our team over at the anti-racism and diversity um and inclusion team that will be sorting everything using gis to identify those applicants within the unincorporated areas once those applicants within the unincorporated areas are identified then we will be placing them in their respective tier need using the cova 19 vulnerability and um recovery index there are five tiers from highest to lowest need each applicant will be placed in their respective need then we will be holding an online lottery sometime during the week of december 6 to allow those applicants to actually view the lottery take place there will be five lotteries one for each tier the lottery purpose will be to provide a ranking system to which the applicants will be pulled for processing also in addition to using the covid 19 vulnerability and recovery index we are required to also allocate funding based on the tier so for the highest tier we will be putting 40 of the dollars the highest the high tier is 34 35 and then we go 25 3 and 2 for a total of a hundred i believe it's 40 30 25 3 2. so um we're going to have that lottery online and then we're going to start from top to bottom for each one of those tiers and allocate funds accordingly i hope that answered your question mr wagner thank you and we have an additional question from the line of you lee you and your line is unmuted please go ahead hello can you guys hear me yes so just a quick question so uh how uh sorry uh what is the maximum amount of the small businesses can get the grant from this program and what is what what is the minimum amount that this unincorporated unincorporated area of small businesses get to grant from this program the maximum amount is forty thousand and the minimum is five thousand thank you and one additional question from the line of martha castro martha your line is unmuted please go ahead martha your line is unmuted if you would like to ask your question sorry i this is martha i put the question in the chat so i was not ready for the microphone um what info do they need to submit the businesses when they apply what questions and later what financial documentation they need to submit i just want to make sure they are ready because many times the businesses don't have their income tax or whatever so what documentation or info they need so i'll take that one emilio so initially to apply there is no documentation needed and we did that on purpose we wanted to keep the application very simple just to have folks um be able to apply once they're selected via the lottery then we will begin um with the request for the documentation the application requests very specific and general facts about the business when did you start your business where is your business located how many full-time employees do you have how many part-time employees do you have as part of this application process in order to ensure that we are meeting our equity principles we're also requesting some information with regards to a number of metrics with regards to gender race ethnicity etc to make sure that we're really um targeting those folks in those communities that need it most once we host once we have the lotteries and we select applicants then we will move into the documentation phase all applicants will be having a minimum of 15 business days to provide documentation the documentation does include the business tax returns it also includes formation documents the formation documents are very important to us because many of these applicants um are not necessary are small business entities they might be corporations llc etc so we really need to know who has the ability to enter into contract on behalf of that entity also very key and i i will flag it is a business license for those uh that'll be coming into this process it is clear that it's key that they have a business license that shows their business location within the unincorporated county area if there's any question regarding whether or not the business is in the unincorporated area if you visit our website you will be able to see our program website that there is a tool there where people can input their addresses and it will tell them whether or not they're in the unincorporated areas we also have frequently asked questions available in multiple languages where folks can have can see a more detailed list of the documents that will be required and i wanted to expand on that if i may because this was a very very important question and one in which we had real lessons learned having launched a number of emergency small business relief grants in the past we we learned very early on that uh many of these micro businesses uh are challenged with getting some of these some of this documentation together and many of them early on when we launched a lot of loan programs with existing funds before cares money was launched we saw that the application simply weren't coming in from these communities and so as a result of that we launched a number of webinars uh specifically for the small business community to let them know what they would need in order to access grant funds in the future because we know that documentation can be an obstacle and a barrier so carolina's group really launched a number of webinars in conjunction with the department of consumer and business affairs to really get that information out there and uh one of the lessons learned which we deployed here is don't ask for anything upfront just have folks register because that in and of itself could be the obstacle and the barrier that discourages someone from applying so the initial is just very very high level information that just gets you into the queue once the business is selected to the lottery system at that point we will engage and start working very closely with that business owner to get the documents together so we know that this this is a very high touch program it requires a lot of back and forth coaching that small business through the process and that's what we're going to be doing in this report thank you and as a reminder members of the media if you wish to ask a question please raise your hand using the hand icon or send the host to chat with your name and media outlet to be placed in queue one moment please as we allow for questions to queue up it appears that there are no further questions at this time mr salas back to you for some closing remarks thank you for that and thank you once again to members of the press you are a key in making sure that the word gets out to these small communities and really just want to say a word of thanks uh to supervisor mitchell to our entire board for being very very intentional and giving us this directive to make sure that these funds go directly into the communities that and i want to offer supervisor mitchell the final word is she'd like to have thank you very much billiard i want to thank you and your staff for um rolling this out in record time and getting it done again to our media partners help us help our small and micro businesses you know our small businesses really across this state are our major employers and as goes la county's economy as goes the state's economy and so you know we can only imagine the significance a grant between 5000 and forty thousand what it would mean for a small business we heard it from this wonderful um child care provider those are just the kind of businesses that this kind of grant could make the difference in their ability to keep their doors open and now more than ever we need to not lose child care providers we need to not lose any small employer across this county as we are working very hard to build back equitably so thanks emilio we've got a week call everybody tell everybody i hope the media will read multiple stories you know better than we do how many times it takes for people to imprint new information and act quickly so we ask that you just help us by sharing it with your readership thank you thank you you

2021-11-20 08:12

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