A new report co-authored by two advocacy groups -- UnidosUS and Color of Change -- examines the results of federal efforts to bail out struggling minority-owned small businesses and minority workers. Speaking to 500 black and hispanic small business owners, and 1,219 black and hispanic workers, the report finds many aren’t getting the relief they need.

UnidosUS is a Washington, DC-based advocacy group that focuses on issues faced by the Latino community “in the areas of civic engagement, civil rights and immigration, education, workforce and the economy, health, and housing,” according to their website. Color of Change, for its part, is “the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.”

In their survey, the organizations found that “very few small businesses-of-color have received the assistance they have requested” from the federal government. To break it down, only 12 percent said they received the full assistance they sought, 28 percent received a portion of it, 21 percent is still waiting, and a whopping 41 percent said they did not receive any assistance at all.

Broken down by category, 23 percent of black-owned businesses said they haven’t gotten any assistance whatsoever while half of Latino-owned businesses find themselves in the same boat.

These numbers check out with recent reporting by Contractor News’ Patty Rodriguez, who looked at local surveys in Kansas City, Missouri and New York City. 

According to the report, “business owners of color didn’t ask for much, but didn’t receive it either.” 51 percent of those who sought assistance asked for less than $20,000 but, as previously stated, a mere 12 percent got what they asked for.

In addition to the initial blow of having to close down temporarily (one in five black small businesses and one in ten Latino small businesses), the costs of staying open appear extremely burdensome to the point where many are worried about the short-term future of their businesses. Fifteen percent of those polled said they’d have to close down in less than a month if conditions remain the same, 30 percent said they’d have to close in the next one-to-six months, and more than half, 55 percent, said they could last longer than six months.

These results are actually more promising than what we are seeing in some places on the local level. For example, 85 percent of women and minority-owned small businesses in New York City say they won’t last longer than six months, according to the city’s Comptroller Office.

Meanwhile, eligibility for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Payment Protection Program (PPP) remains a confusing issue for business owners. Of the black and Latino-owned business polled, 32 percent didn’t think they were eligible, 26 percent were worried they would not be approved, 14 percent said the application process was “too difficult,” and another 14 percent didn’t even know the relief programs existed.

Mounting difficulties are not, however, only occurring among minority owned businesses In a June 25 report on the government’s overall coronavirus relief efforts, chief among the concerns of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) over the PPP rollout was that the application process was confusing. Small businesses across the board face confusing paperwork and regulations.

Here’s what the GAO had to say:

“SBA moved quickly to establish a new nationwide program, but the pace contributed to confusion and questions about the program and raised program integrity concerns. First, borrowers and lenders raised a number of questions about the program and eligibility criteria. To address these concerns, SBA and the Treasury issued a number of interim final rules and several versions of responses to frequently asked questions (see figure). However, questions and confusion remained. The Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act of 2020, enacted in June 2020, modified key program components.”

So what steps are minority-owned small businesses taking to bear the brunt of the shutdown? 44 percent say they have reduced the number of hours for full time employees, 21 percent have laid them off, and 14 percent have been forced to reduce their wages. The business owners polled also said that they have had to reduce hours for part-time employees (25 percent), laid them off (24 percent), or reduced their wages (10 percent.)

This is obviously less than ideal. So what exactly is to blame for these poor results from the PPP in regards to minority-owned businesses? The UnidosUS/Color of Change report provides a “list of statements” made by the small business owners they interviewed. The most common one, which was claimed by 51 percent, said the “stimulus package gives too many handouts to big corporations.”

Source: Government Accountability Office.

Meanwhile, 49 percent “strongly support” the view that “the funds in this stimulus package are going to big corporations and not to working people fast enough,” and 46 percent strongly believe that “working people should be the top priority, but this bill was only intended to boost the stock market.”

These claims are substantiated by the GAO’s June 25 report, which found that of the hundreds of billions of dollars ($512,271,684,145) handed out through the Payment Protection Program, “the almost 2 percent of loans that were greater than $1 million (about $180 billion) accounted for 35 percent of funds.”

The business owners interviewed by Color of Change and UnidosUS are largely in agreement on top policy priorities for future relief bills with a majority strongly supporting policies like: “appropriate equipment and safety protections for all frontline, essential workers for the duration of the crisis” (73 percent); “foreclosures on individually owned and small business properties must be suspended until the end of, the crisis” (68 percent); “debt collection activities must be suspended until the end of the crisis,” (67 percent); and “negative credit reporting must be suspended until the end of the crisis” (67 percent).

While the federal government continues to strategize on tackling the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis, it may do well to listen to the voices of minority owned small businesses who more and more each day appear left out from national relief efforts.