DENVER — The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for small businesses across the country. One of the contributing factors, as NPR reports, is that consumers have turned to large online retailers like Amazon to purchase their necessities instead of shopping in-person at local businesses. The Payment Protection Program—the federal government’s attempt to help small businesses stay afloat—provided some relief, but experts are still debating if the program was effective in preventing the closure of small businesses.
In July 2020, the Colorado Sun tracked how many small businesses in Colorado received a loan from the Payment Protection Program. More than $10 billion in forgivable loans were distributed to over 100,000 small businesses in Colorado, a plurality of them in Denver.
Yet it has been challenging to discern how severely the COVID-19 pandemic has affected Black-owned businesses. Analysis from the Center for Public Integrity found that just 14% of the PPP loans exceeding $150,000 specified the race or ethnicity of the business owner who received the loan. Less than 2% of those businesses are Black-owned.
“During this time of COVID, one of the things that has been undeniable is that with all the financial aid that has been offered, many small Black businesses in Colorado have been unable to take advantage of it for a number of reasons,” said Lee Gash-Maxey, the Executive Director of the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce.