These Grants Are a Lifeline for Altadena’s Fire-Impacted Small Businesses

After delays and remediation efforts due to the Eaton Fire, Amber Hewitt (center), achieved her dream of opening a senior care facility in Altadena this summer. She stands in the yard of her small business, Azalea House, with caregiver Ashley Mosley (left) and house manager Gheycell Flores. (Photo by Corinne Ruff / AfroLA)

This story was co-published with AfroLA, nonprofit solutions journalism for Los Angeles told through the lens of the Black community. To republish this article, please contact AfroLA. Subscribe to AfroLA’s newsletter.

After years of renovating her late-aunt’s Altadena home and saving up, Amber Hewitt was finally in the home stretch of licensing her six-bed senior living facility, Azalea House. She was scheduled for inspections the day she got the evacuation notice about the Eaton Fire.

“ Being a single mom of two kids and putting everything into this so that my kids would be OK financially, and to have it all kind of flash before your eyes like that… was hard,” said Hewitt, a first-time business owner who worked as a registered nurse for more than 15 years.

Hewitt’s business, located a block off the main Lake Avenue business thoroughfare in West Altadena, was spared by the fire. But much of her equipment and supplies were damaged. She had to dip into her savings and retirement accounts to pursue her dream of opening the facility – which she did in August. More than half of her employees were displaced at one point.

“Business owners in Altadena, a lot of us are Altadena natives, and so we’re still processing the loss of so much around us,” she said. “There’s still a big need for funding.”

Microbusinesses, which typically operate as sole proprietorships or on a small scale, were the backbone of Altadena’s economy before the Eaton Fire. Many are still struggling to get back on their feet. Preliminary research from UCLA on small businesses impacted by the wildfires finds that microbusinesses drive small business creation, but they are often harder to identify because the majority in Altadena operate from homes. They also face greater challenges in recovery, including barriers to accessing aid and language barriers.

But grant providers and community development groups, including $1.5 million from the LA branch of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and $300,000 from Inclusive Action for the City, are providing a vital lifeline to small businesses as they recover.

Silvia González, co-director of research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, said resources should focus on supporting microbusinesses, which prop up the local economy.

“We often think about the housing recovery and the business recovery as being two separate things,” she said. “But they’re not in the case of these types of communities where you tend to have more people of color, less higher affluent incomes and you have people that are operating businesses out of their homes.”

González said nearly 5,000 businesses were either directly impacted or very near the fires, and their struggles will have a ripple effect on the regional economy.

“Typically when you invest your dollars in small businesses, that money stays in the community. It produces local jobs, it supports neighborhood stability. It generates revenue for the local tax base, for your schools, for your public services, your infrastructure,” she said. “So now you’re going to have huge consequences where that local tax base may not be there for a few years, or may not return.”

Opening after the fire

In the aftermath of the Eaton Fire, the U.S. Small Business Administration stepped in to offer low-interest loans to affected business owners, but many have been wary of taking on more debt. González said business owners are telling her they don’t want more loans.

Overall, she’s heard resistance from business owners: “ ’Your aid should not come in the form of a loan, it should really come in the form of a grant, because now you’re asking us to repay for something that we were not responsible for.’”

Some, like Hewitt, didn’t qualify because the business wasn’t yet licensed at the time of the fire. That’s made grants – money that does not need to be repaid – an essential part of the recovery process.

Read the full story at AfroLA.

Elizabeth Moss is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles. Moss likes writing solutions stories about child welfare, domestic violence, and health disparities. Her work has appeared in The 19th, AfroLA and San Francisco Business Times, among others. She has held multiple reporting fellowships, including a California Health Equity Fellowship at USC’s Center for Health Journalism. In the past, she worked as a podcast producer, fact-checker and researcher.

Corinne Ruff is an L.A.-based multimedia journalist with a decade of experience in writing, radio and podcasting. Corinne’s work has appeared across NPR programming, but she’s most passionate about local news. At St. Louis Public Radio, much of her reporting spotlighted how leaders within the Black community are rebuilding the city’s Northside after decades of disinvestment. She’s kind of obsessed with how history shapes neighborhoods and sharing it with anyone who will listen. In her free time, Corinne is usually eating homemade food with family, trying to convince her one-year-old that walking is a good idea or crocheting little critters.

This post was originally published on Next City.