Staff from U.S. Small Business Administration Region IV visit North Texas businesses that received PPP loans, before holding virtual townhall.
DALLAS — The pandemic has been tough on small businesses across North Texas, including many minority-owned companies.
“It’s been devastating. It’s been devastating for so many Americans throughout this country,” said Tre’ Black, president of On Target Supplies and Logistics.
Access to a loan from the government’s Payroll Protection Program, or PPP, is helping the 38-year-old family business sustain.
“The fact of the matter is we have north of 200 employees, and so those women and men depend on us every single day to make sure that we provide some type of security, even if it’s short term for their jobs,” said Black.
However, access to PPP funding has been challenging for many small businesses to obtain.
That is why Ashley Bell, Esq., the regional administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration for Region IV, visited Dallas County on Tuesday. He spent the afternoon touring businesses, like On Target and Dallas Area Patrol and Protection Services in DeSoto. Both of those companies received PPP funds.
Bell has been working with the City of Dallas and Chambers of Commerce on a virtual town hall meeting. Their plan was to highlight resources available for Black entrepreneurs, nonprofits and faith-based organizations.
“We have a new loan product out. We call it CARL. It’s a Community Advantage Recovery Loan,” said Bell.
The U.S. Small Business Administration has been shifting resources from big banks to smaller institutions that offer technical assistance, according to its staff.
“We knew that African American business were going to, more than others, need that technical assistance to get access to the resources,” said Bell.
There are 132,000 Black-owned nonprofits and businesses across Dallas-Fort Worth, according to Bell and City of Dallas staff.
WFAA took a snapshot of some of the nonprofits that received PPP loans back in May. WFAA investigative producers pulled out all of the addresses that could be identified as churches and put them on a map.
The data shows seven of the churches are located south of Interstate 30. About 50 of the churches that received PPP funding are in North Dallas.
What the data does not reveal is how many other faith-based organizations applied for the funding and got rejected.
“That’s exactly why we are doing a deep dive,” Bell said. “We saw Dallas as a perfect opportunity for such a large population of Black business owners and nonprofit leaders.”
Businesses like On Target participated in the town hall meeting.
Black said his plan was to offer up strategies to help other businesses.
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