PPP: BIPOC Businesses Received Less Than White Businesses

Jovita Carranza has previously served as deputy administrator of the SBA, under President George W. Bush, and was a strong Trump ally during his 2016 campaign | AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

Under immense pressure to release data about the SBA Paycheck Protection Program, a list of 660,000 loans appeared on Monday, which only represents about 15% of the total number of loans issued in perhaps one of the most ambitious and largest stimulus packages ever assembled.

The data shows the government issued $521 billion in loans, with an average PPP loan size of $107,000. While the SBA insists that these loans helped support 51 million jobs, the data is vague at best. In the data, exact amounts are not specified only ‘Loan Ranges’ were made public.

Additionally, a lot of the data is incomplete and/or missing altogether. When it comes to ethnicity, only 14% of businesses that chose to identify race in their loan application. Of that 14%, Black-owned/BIPOC businesses received 1.9% of loans while White-owned businesses received 83%.

There were also completely false entries into the data set, such as Index Ventures the startup accelerator, and Bird the electric scooter sharing company.

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Earlier today, there was an erroneous entry that Index Ventures applied for a PPP loan. We can confirm that Index Ventures did not apply for a PPP loan at any point. Our legal team is looking into why our name is listed and looking to correct it ASAP.
— Index Ventures (@IndexVentures) July 6, 2020

“Bird was erroneously listed as a company that filed for a PPP Loan. We did not apply for nor did we receive a PPP Loan. We decided as a company not to file an application as we did not want to divert critical funding from small and local businesses.” – Bird
— Bird (@BirdRide) July 6, 2020

Even further, among the loan recipients, 48,922 reported “zero” as the number of jobs they would retain with the money, and 40,506 applicants appeared to leave that section blank altogether.

In a fact sheet that was included with the release of the data, the SBA points out that “Paycheck Protection Program Loans are not made by SBA,” and that “PPP loans are made by lending institutions and then guaranteed by SBA. Accordingly, borrowers apply to lenders and self-certify that they are eligible for PPP loans.”

These filings also show that nearly 10,000 religious organizations received PPP loans since the launch of the program in April. Several of these churches, who are closely affiliated with Trump and his supporters, amassed over $17.3 in low interested government loans. Willow Creek Community Church received between $5 – $10 Million.

In 2018 Willow Creek paid $3.25 Million to settle lawsuits alleging that a volunteer for the church sexually abused children.

In Colorado, our home state, the numbers are even more bizarre — of the 65,534 businesses who received loans in this round of disclosure, only 79 identified as black-owned. 29 of them identified as American Indian, with 516 Asian-owned and 732 Hispanic-owned businesses. Compared to that, 4,110 businesses identified as white. Roughly 91% of businesses did not disclose their race or ethnicity.