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Harris County’s small business loan
Harris County is offering small businesses loans during COVID-19 pandemic, and as reporter Randy Wallace finds, many are beyond grateful.
HOUSTON - "Small businesses are the ones that really make our economy thrive but its small businesses that feel the economic disruptions the most and the fastest," said Precinct 2 County Commissioner Adrian Garcia.
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Marilyn Jordan and Naomi Scales can attest to that.
The women are co-owners of Marfran Cleaning a commercial cleaning company.
"It was a big deal that I wanted to make sure my employees were taken care of," Scales said.
Marfran Cleaning was able to operate during this pandemic but everything was changing. Most offices didn't need them because employees were working from home and it was costing them more to service their government and state clients.
They had to lay off some employees.
"You feel like you're letting them down during a time when they really need their jobs," Scales said it was really nerve-wracking."
"We treat our employees like they're family and we don't want this incident to show that in any other way," Jordan said.
The women say they tried other small business loan program and got nothing more than the runaround.
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Not so with the county's program.
On Monday, they got their check
"It was pretty exciting," said Jordan. "We knew we needed some help."
The county began their $10 million small business loan program on April 7.
"24 days in government terms that's 24 hours we have been able to help businesses keep their doors open and keep their employees off the unemployment lines," said Garcia.
If each business that applied requested the maximum $25,000, 400 small businesses could be helped.
"Yet we had over 7,000 businesses apply," Garcia said.
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7,000 Harris Co. small businesses have applied for help
As small businesses feel the burn from the economic shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several thousand of them are applying for help.
$152 million is needed to help all the small businesses that reached out to the county for assistance.
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