BURLINGTON — More than two dozen Burlington small businesses and nonprofits owned by people of color will begin receiving grants up to $7,000 from the city next week.
For many of these businesses, the city says, there has been little economic relief up until this point.
Since the pandemic started, Burlington has doled out thousands of dollars in grants to local businesses, often using federal Community Development Block Grant funds, to help keep them afloat through lockdowns. Some of those businesses have also received federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans.
Yet up until now, many organizations — particularly those owned by people of color — have been excluded from that kind of support, says Tyeastia Green, the city’s director of racial equity. The new grant program, which the City Council approved last month, will help to fix that.
“This is going to the people we have forgotten about,” she said.
In October, Burlington offered its most recent round of grant funding to small businesses across the city. As Green helped distribute the funds, she became distinctly aware that a number of businesspeople were ineligible. Only brick-and-mortar companies were recipients, for instance.
“That means the tutor, the hair stylist, the Uber driver, the food truck owner — none of them were going to be helped in this process,” she said.
Green set out to spearhead a new program that did.
The BIPOC Small Business and Nonprofit Relief Fund will start administering grants ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 beginning next week. Twenty-five small businesses and nonprofits owned by people of color have applied. Green expects most, if not all, to receive the grants. Local foundations and businesses, like Burton and Ben and Jerry’s, donated the bulk of the funding for the program.
The need for a specific program of this sort is emblematic of the structural barriers that can exclude communities of color from pandemic relief, nationwide and in Burlington, she said.
“It’s very hard for Black and Indigenous people to rent — let alone buy — a brick-and-mortar here in this city,” Green said. Others might not have accountants and other support to fill out complicated grant and loan applications.
Grant recipients will range from hair stylists to tutors, Uber drivers and mental health therapists, Green said. “The money that we have is going to be spent very quickly,” she said.
The businesses and individuals targeted by the program are, in many cases, especially important for Burlington’s Black and Indigenous communities, immigrants and refugees, and other communities of color.
“If we lose these businesses that provide services to their communities, what’s going to be in their place?” Green said. “Who can they go to for cultural foods? Who can they go to who will understand how to do their hair? What happens to these communities if these businesses close?”
“Burlington would feel the pain of that as a whole,” she said.
Businesses owned by people of color face economic challenges in Burlington, particularly during the pandemic. Patience Bannerman, who owns Mawuhi African Market in Burlington’s Old North End, knows this well.
Though Bannerman has rented her space on North Winooski Avenue for 13 years, in October the building’s new owner, Jason Lin, wrote her a letter informing her that the market had to vacate the premises in six weeks. He told Seven Days that he plans to renovate the building and potentially open his own business there.
When the news got around there was an enormous community outcry, and a GoFundMe campaign to help Bannerman raised more than $25,000. “To this day, people walk in and ask me, when are you moving? Is there anything I can do to help you?” she told VTDigger. Lin has since extended her lease six months, she said.
Even with the attention and an earlier small business grant from the city, Bannerman is unsure whether she will be able to stay in the Old North End, where rents are high and space is limited. She would like to, she says, because of the community that she has built there. “The places I checked out [in the neighborhood] are not fit for the market,” she said. “So I’m still looking.”
Since the pandemic began, Bannerman has applied for several other business grants. She was told that she “didn’t qualify, didn’t qualify.”
Green says this new round of grants is being distributed just in time. “Business is starting to fall again,” she said, as cases rise and winter weather arrives.
“I know that $7,000 isn’t a lot of money,” she said. “But it will be the first step to ensuring that these businesses are still around when Covid is lifted from on top of our necks.”
