Meet the Merchant Leaders of the Citywide Merchant Organizing Project

In the summer of 2022, ANHD launched the Citywide Merchant Organizing Project with funding from the NYC Department of Small Business Services and Goldman Sachs Foundation. Over the course of the first year of the program, we worked with seven partner organizations - Asian American Federation, BKLVLUP, Chhaya CDC, Cooper Square Committee, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, Rockaway East Merchants Association, and the Yemeni American Merchants Association - to form merchants associations, develop merchant leaders, and build merchant power against the threats of commercial tenant displacement.

This video series shares the stories of a handful of those merchant leaders, all of them immigrants and/or people of color, and their storefront businesses in East Flatbush, Flatlands, Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill, the Lower East Side, and Kingsbridge. Many of them mention the challenges of opening and maintaining a successful business and the uncertainty of their long-term stability as rents rise, but they also emphasize the importance of the support they receive from organizations like our CMOP partners. With the leadership of these merchants and many more like them, ANHD and our partners continue to organize and advocate for commercial tenant protections.

Casa Adela in the Lower East Side

Casa Adela is a neighborhood institution run by merchant leader Luis Rivera, who took over the Puerto Rican restaurant when his mother passed away. Luis talks about the rising rents in the Lower East Side and what that means for the future of his business. With the help of his community, legal service providers, and organizations like the Cooper Square Committee, Luis was able to fight off a massive rent increase, access funding opportunities, and keep his doors open.

Lucy’s Flower Shop in Kingsbridge

Just down the street from the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, Lucy’s Flower Shop is one among a tight-knit group of long-term businesses who have organized to keep each others’ doors open through challenges that have included untenable rent increases, pandemic shutdowns, and now the city’s third redevelopment attempt of the armory, which is contributing to upward rent pressures. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is helping to reactivate the local merchants association in order to build the leadership of merchants like Lucy and make sure they are heard in the redevelopment process.

Shangrila of Nepal, Desi Wears, Didi Dukan, Green Boy Fruit & Vegetable, Shivram's Bakery, Rara Group, and Amrit Textiles in Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill

These seven businesses serve the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities of Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill. The importance of these businesses–which include a grocery store, a money transfer agency, and a fabric store–cannot be overstated. In a neighborhood of diverse immigrants and languages, local small businesses provide goods and services that residents rely on to maintain their cultural and religious identities. Chhaya CDC works alongside these businesses and many more to make sure they can stay in place and continue serving their communities. 

Lips Cafe in East Flatbush

Lips Cafe doesn’t just serve coffee–they serve community. Jamane Weekes co-owns the cafe and community space with his mother, and they anchor their East Flatbush community by hosting events, collaborating with other businesses and local nonprofits, and offering a space for local residents to work and connect. Jamane contributes his leadership and expansive network to BKLVLUP’s merchant organizing work in the neighborhood.

The Eighty 8th Med Spa in Flatbush

Dr. Marie Paul and her three children co-own and operate The Eighty 8th Med Spa, bringing health and beauty treatments to her home community in the heart of Brooklyn and also transferring knowledge and training to develop medical professionals within the neighborhood. As a merchant leader working with BKLVLUP, Dr. Paul helps drive an economic development model that builds community wealth.

Suede in East Flatbush

Managing partner Chasen Hollancind calls Suede a restaurant “by the community for the community,” providing upscale dining in a neighborhood where residents would often have to travel elsewhere to find such options. The journey to become a restaurant and community space, however, required a lot of work navigating city systems and competing against larger, more established businesses. Now, Chasen works with BKLVLUP and helps other entrepreneurs on their own journeys by sharing his experience.

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All of these merchant leaders are helping to organize with CMOP partners in addition to doing the work of owning and operating a small business, maintaining a commercial space, and navigating city systems  that often don’t work for them. They organize because they recognize the importance of building power together in order to fight displacement, build community wealth, and drive truly equitable economic development.

To learn more about ANHD’s small business work, visit the CMOP page and the USBnyc page on our website. To learn more about the displacement pressures commercial tenants are facing, check out this article in the New York Times. And stay tuned for ANHD’s upcoming report, “The State of Storefronts 2023: Beyond Recovery.”

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The State of Storefronts 2023: Beyond Recovery

New survey shows one in four small businesses may close this year

Change in Storefront Rents, 2019 - 2021

ANHD's 2023 map of changes in storefront rents from 2019-2021 shows that rents increased dramatically in parts of Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, while they decreased in most of Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island.

    The State of Storefronts: Alarming Vacancy Rates and Rising Rents during the Pandemic

    During the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City’s commercial corridors have undergone significant shifts, with countless small businesses permanently shuttered and vacancies on the rise. Using the latest annual release of storefront registry data, we assess the state of storefronts as of December 2020, months after the pandemic first forced shutdowns in New York City.

    Testimony to the NYC City Council Committee on Small Business Combatting Commercial Vacancies

    Thank you to Chair Menin and the members of the committee for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Emily Goldstein, and I’m the Director of Organizing and Advocacy at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD). ANHD is one of the City’s leading policy, advocacy, and capacity-building organizations. Our membership consists of over 80 neighborhood-based and city-wide nonprofits that have affordable housing or equitable economic development as a key part of their mission.

    ANHD Testimony for September 7 2021 City Council Small Business Hearing

    Commercial tenants do not currently have any rent protections beyond what is included in their lease. This means that small businesses are often hit with rent increases they can’t afford, which effectively function as evictions to make way for higher-paying tenants or lead to commercial vacancies.

    Storefront Registry Will Help Small Businesses Combat Speculation

    Small businesses in New York City finally have data to help in the fight against gentrification and displacement. Thanks to years of advocacy by ANHD to win the passage of Local Law 157 in 2019, the NYC Department of Finance has collected and published the first round of annual data in the storefront registry from December 2019, with information on storefront rents, vacancies, and lease terms.

    The existence of the storefront registry is a major victory for anti-displacement organizing, which would not have happened without the work of United for Small Business NYC (USBnyc), a coalition of community organizations across New York City fighting to protect New York’s small businesses and commercial tenants from the threat of displacement.

    For many years, ANHD has supported tenant organizers in using housing data to craft data-driven direct services and campaigns through our trainings and the Displacement Alert Project. With timely data about what’s happening in their neighborhoods and throughout the city, residential tenants can fight back against predatory landlords and push for citywide policies that lead to more equitable outcomes. Now, small businesses will be able to do the same.

    Until this point, small business organizers have had to rely on anecdotal evidence and local survey data to make the case that rising rents in gentrifying communities are leading to the displacement of small businesses, nonprofits, artists, and others who rent storefront spaces. Meanwhile, rents and vacancies have risen across the city, and the pandemic has made it more likely that rent increases will lead to shuttered storefronts. Businesses in low-income communities and communities of color are the most vulnerable to commercial displacement. But even in the wake of the pandemic, small businesses are being hit with rent increases they can’t afford, which effectively function as evictions to make way for higher-paying commercial tenants or lead to commercial vacancies.

    The initial storefront registry data provides a snapshot of what was happening to storefront spaces before COVID-19 devastated New York City in 2020, including an aggregate analysis of storefront data and a searchable database of storefronts. Thanks to ANHD and USBnyc’s advocacy, New York City will have data on our storefronts that will enable all of us to examine and compare the state of our storefronts, pre- and post-pandemic.

    ANHD’s analysis of this new data source found that in 2019, Brooklyn had the highest vacancy rate of any borough at 9.2%, followed closely by Manhattan (9.1%).* 

     

     

    The city’s highest vacancy rates were in Central Brooklyn Council Districts 35 and 36, which include the gentrifying, majority-Black neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Heights, and Crown Heights. These neighborhoods had a vacancy rate of 15.6% (CD 35) and 14.2% (CD 36) as compared to 8.3% citywide.

     

    Click here to see the map in a new window.

     

    This data also shows huge differences in rents across the city. Median monthly rents in Manhattan were $9.00 per square foot in 2019, while every other borough had a median monthly rent less than $4.00 per square foot.

     

     

    Median monthly rents in Council Districts 3 and 4 were $11.00 and $14.00 per square foot respectively. These districts include high-rent commercial corridors in Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and the Upper East Side, as well as Midtown and the new mega-development of Hudson Yards. But even in the outer boroughs, we can see higher median rents in gentrifying districts like the South Asian and Latinx immigrant enclave of Jackson Heights in CD 25 ($5.00/sf), as compared to the Queens-wide median of $3.67. This is an example of a neighborhood where we would expect to see higher rates of displacement as commercial leases expire and speculative landlords look to take advantage of the post-pandemic commercial real estate market.

     

    Click here to see the map in a new window.

     

    Over the next few months, ANHD will continue to analyze this data and share these critical findings. As we get new updates and compare pre-pandemic rents and vacancies against the changes wrought by COVID-19, we will assess the pandemic’s impact on our commercial corridors and propose policy solutions that address that impact.

    We look forward to continued collaboration with Local Law 157’s lead sponsor Council Member Helen Rosenthal; Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Council Member Carlina Rivera, who have also put forward legislation to increase publicly available data about commercial corridors; as well as the Department of Finance in making sure this data is collected and accessible to the public.

    Regardless of what this and future storefront registry data tell us, we implore all New York City’s current and incoming elected officials to work with us to support our city’s small businesses. We cannot allow the unequal impact of COVID-19 to trigger a wave of commercial and cultural displacement that will resonate across the city.

     

    *Note: We calculated the citywide vacancy rates for 2019 by adding Class 1 and Class 2 and 4 data and dividing the number of storefronts reported not leased or owner occupied (i.e. vacant) by the total number of storefronts.

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    Testimony Before the New York State Senate Finance Committee and New York State Assembly Committee on Ways and Means

    My name is Karen Narefsky, and I am the Senior Organizer for Equitable Economic Development at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD). I am testifying today on behalf of United for Small Business NYC, a coalition of which we are a member. I would like to thank Committee Chairs Krueger, Weinstein, Kaplan, and Bronson for holding today’s hearing on the economic development-related proposals in the Governor’s Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Executive Budget.

    New York's Small Businesses Left Out of the Paycheck Protection Program

    The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated small businesses nationwide, particularly in hard-hit cities like New York City and especially so in the City’s low-income communities and communities of color. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a response by the federal government to provide capital to businesses that had to shut down or reduce operations to slow the spread of COVID. It wasn’t until months after the program launched that the Small Business Administration released loan-level data, enabling the public to analyze the full extent of relief provided. The data has many limitations, particularly in the lack of demographic information for most loans, lack of census-tract level data, lack of application and denial information, inconsistent information between loans below and above $150,000, and data errors throughout. However, in the aggregate, the database provides some high-level insights into who benefited from this program and who didn’t as Congress debates future iterations of the program. 

    The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) analyzed the PPP data for zip codes in New York City and found that nearly 140,000 loans - 86% of all PPP loans in the City - were under $150,000, meaning the majority of loans went to small businesses. However, when we looked more closely, we found many people and communities did not receive the support they needed.

     

    Key Findings

    1. More funding should be directed to struggling small businesses - 86% of loans were under $150,000 and totaled just $4.1 billion, whereas the remaining loans were over $150,000 and totaled two to five times more ($9.6 billion - $22.7 billion). Also, $134 billion of total PPP funding was never loaned out.
    2. PPP loans did not reach people or communities of color - The geographic distribution of loans largely matches pre-existing inequitable lending patterns, with lower concentrations of loans in low-income communities and communities of color where COVID hit hardest.
    3. Nonbank lenders are more prevalent in communities of color and with smaller businesses - The percentage of PPP loans by nonbanks are higher in communities of color - communities that have fewer traditional bank branches and higher rates of unbanked people. These nonbank and additional online-only lenders were also more likely to make loans under $150,000, meaning small businesses did not have the same access to traditional banks for PPP loans.
    4. Loans did not reach the industries that needed them the most - 30% of loans went to businesses that are more suited to working remotely, and 50% went to “face-to-face” industries that had to shut down or reduce operations.
    5. For-profit landlords received loans while tenants got little to no relief - Over 1,900 landlords and management companies in New York City received up to $305 million in PPP loans at a time when tenants are getting little to no relief. This includes some landlords with histories of alleged harassment and displacement.

     

    More Funding Could Be Directed to Struggling Small Businesses

    Nearly 140,000 loans - 86% of all PPP loans in the City - were under $150,000. This is an amount which has long been expressed as an unmet credit need. Among the loans under $150,000, the average amount was much lower at $31,000, with a median of $20,000, indicating the program served some very small businesses. As impressive as those initial figures seem, the PPP data also indicates that many businesses and communities were left out of the program. Loans under $150,000 totaled just $4.1 billion, whereas loans over $150,000 totaled two to five times more, between $9.6 billion and $22.7 billion[1]. Meanwhile, $134 billion of total PPP funding was never loaned out. This money could have been better directed towards struggling small businesses.

    As the forgiveness process for the program begins, there are several factors that indicate whether an existing loan was successful. These include whether a business was able to have the loan forgiven or repaid in affordable terms, and whether the business was able to reopen and have sufficient capital and resources to continue operating over the long term. Unfortunately, many small businesses - particularly those operated by people of color - do not have access to these resources and may still not survive.

     

    Loans Did Not Reach People or Communities of Color

    The geographic distribution of loans largely matches typical inequitable lending patterns with lower concentrations of loans in low-income communities and communities of color where COVID hit hardest. Outside of lower Manhattan, the largest concentrations are in Flushing, Long Island City, Greenpoint, Park Slope, and Downtown Brooklyn. Corona (11368) and Elmhurst (11373), both low-income communities of color, had among the highest rates of COVID and received fewer than 1,000 loans each. In contrast, at least 6 zip codes in lower Manhattan - each a fraction of the size - received over 3,000 – 5,000 loans each.

     

    To view the full map, click here.

     

    Nonbank Lenders are More Prevalent in Communities of Color and With Smaller Businesses

    Just 5% of all loans reported demographic data, and of those that did, 15% went to Hispanic-owned businesses and 5% to Black-owned businesses. Nonbank Financial Technology (FinTech) lenders are more prevalent in communities of color and end up reaching more of the smallest businesses than traditional banks. The percentage of loans by nonbanks are higher in communities of color - communities that have fewer traditional bank branches and higher rates of unbanked people. Of the top 10 lenders, over 98% of loans made by non-bank and online lenders Cross River Bank, Kabbage, Celtic Bank, and WebBank were loans under $150,000[2] compared to, for example, just 83% at Chase and 58% at Signature. This matches trends in 1-4 family lending, further demonstrating how the largest banks are failing to serve communities of color equitably.

     

    To view the full map, click here.

     

    Loans Did Not Reach the Industries that Needed Them the Most

    While all types of businesses have struggled due to COVID, some of the hardest hit were in non-essential industries that were forced to shut down or severely curtail operations, had few or no options to work remotely, and have been slower to fully reopen. Examples include restaurants, hair and nail salons, barber shops, and retail stores. Face-to-face and essential businesses also incurred expenses to purchase Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and update protocols to ensure staff and customers are safe during operations.

    Using a similar methodology to Center for NYC Affairs, we find that about 30% of PPP loans went to businesses that are more suited to working remotely, and 50% went to “face-to-face” industries that had to shut down or reduce operations. The remainder of loans went to essential businesses, such as healthcare and grocery stores.

    16% of loans went to professional, scientific, and technical firms which are much more likely to be able to work remotely and have more reserves. Only 7.2% went to food services establishments that have been among the hardest hit industries. Meanwhile, just 2.3% of loans went to manufacturing firms, many of which had to shut down completely for months. The manufacturing sector is vital to New York City as one of the few sectors where the majority of jobs pay good wages (over $50,000) typically without requiring a college degree, and employs large numbers of immigrants and people of color. Some of these jobs are also a critical part of recovery as the state is contracting with local manufacturers to produce PPE and medical equipment, and relying on warehouses and transportation facilities to keep the city’s supply and distribution chain in motion.

    Only 98 loans went to street vendors, who lost significant revenue if they were able to operate at all. New York City has approximately 20,000 vendors, many of whom have been excluded from multiple relief programs due to their immigration status or the nature of their work. While some vendors were able to continue working, foot traffic declined dramatically. Many vendors were also excluded from other forms of federal relief due to their immigration status.

     

    For-Profit Landlords Received Loans While Tenants Got Little to No Relief

    Over 1,900 landlords and management companies in New York City received up to $305 million in PPP loans at a time when tenants are getting little to no relief. This doesn’t include additional loans to real estate agents, brokers, and companies that finance landlords. The burden on tenants is worse now that expanded unemployment insurance has ended, and the state’s eviction moratorium has expired. PPP money was designed to preserve jobs, and could not have been used for rent relief, but the fact remains that this money went to management staff who are tasked with collecting rent from people who cannot afford to do so.

    In a time of severe housing instability, nonprofit affordable housing providers should be prioritized over for profit landlords, particularly those who have left tenants in unstable and unsafe housing situations. Tenants in buildings owned by some of these landlords have been struggling for years to get necessary services and combat tactics that fuel displacement, and little has changed in the pandemic. Zara Realty, for example, received a PPP loan despite having a documented history of alleged discrimination and poor treatment of tenants, including a lawsuit filed by the NY State attorney general. Two other examples include Chestnut Holdings, which is #9 on the Worst Evictor List; and Pinnacle, #7 on the list - both have a long history of alleged tenant harassment and eviction and yet, they received large PPP loans.

     

    Small Businesses & Tenants Need Bold Action to Address Long-Standing Systemic Inequalities

    While the PPP has been impactful for many businesses, it is also exacerbating long-standing systemic racial and economic inequities. The loans are distributed through banks, yet Black and Hispanic households are unbanked at 5 to 6 times the rate of white households and have significantly fewer bank branches in their neighborhoods. This means they are less likely to have the means to access financing programs like PPP. For some, the structure of the program may also have been a barrier, requiring that 75% of the loan go to salaries (later adjusted to 65%). In New York City, where inflated commercial rents were a top concern even before COVID, businesses are struggling to make up those costs. For businesses where the rent outpaced salaries, or those who didn’t have money to make up the difference, a PPP loan may not have been sufficient to meet their needs. Small businesses may also have been wary to take out a loan if they were unsure about how much would be forgiven or if they would be in business long enough to utilize it. Others may have gone out of business before they could access the loans. 

    Now is the time for bold action to protect small businesses and tenants. Congress can support small businesses through the PPP with swift PPP forgiveness and new rounds of funding targeted to the most vulnerable businesses. They should focus on underserved and underrepresented Black, Indiginous, People of Color (BIPOC) and communities, while ensuring loans do not go to entities with a record of exploitation and harassment. They should also ensure full demographic reporting during the forgiveness process and for new loans moving forward.

    Rather than address these issues, Congress has failed to provide any further relief. It is up to local legislators, financial institutions, and others to provide additional support through grants, low-cost loans, and rent relief. They should provide these directly to small businesses and tenants and through entities like Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and community organizations that serve these populations.

    Small businesses, in particular those operated within and by communities of color, are the economic engine of New York City, and no housing is affordable without a good paying job. Yet, the pandemic is disproportionately harming low-income, BIPOC tenants, homeowners, and small business owners. An equitable recovery to benefit these populations requires targeted, systemic solutions. Our communities can’t wait anymore.

     

    [1] The data for loans over $150,000 is only reported in buckets, making it impossible to know the exact amount loaned (NY State received $39 billion total).

    [2] Cross River and Celtic are online bank lenders that partnered with companies such as Intuit (maker of Quickbooks) and Paypal to make PPP loans. Kabbage is a non-bank lender.

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    Include the Excluded

    New Yorkers across the five boroughs are reeling from both the health and economic impacts of COVID-19. Unemployment has reached record highs with one million New Yorkers losing work, lines for food pantries span blocks, and tenants across the city are concerned about if and how they’ll be able to pay their rent. Undocumented immigrants - who have been excluded from many federal and state economic resources, including the one-time stimulus payments provided by the CARES Act - have even fewer resources to cope with the economic ramifications of the pandemic. At a time when federal rent relief is far from assured, unemployment in New York City is expected to reach levels not seen in decades, and the federal government provides little in the way of economic relief, it is the responsibility of our city to provide basic social and economic resources to all residents.

    While New York City has taken steps toward providing limited relief to immigrant workers and commercial tenants, it has fallen far short of what’s needed, in particular for undocumented New Yorkers. The Immigrant Emergency Relief Program, the City’s $20 million partnership with Open Society Foundations, only serves 3% of our city’s undocumented population. This leaves thousands of our frontline essential workers without aid. New analysis by ANHD based on data from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA) finds that the full cost of matching the one-time payment amounts stipulated by the CARES Act for all undocumented New Yorkers, including children, would be $578,088,000[1]. If the City were to match the need for mixed-status families, the total cost would reach $1.2 billion.

    ANHD and our member organizations fight every day for equity in our neighborhoods and across our city. Undocumented New Yorkers are part of our communities and require adequate resources and support from our city government when the federal government fails to meet their basic needs. Fifty-three percent of undocumented New Yorkers are rent-burdened, paying more than a third of their income in rent, and 24.7% of the undocumented population experiences extreme rent burden, spending more than half of their income on rent. Without stimulus support and with little to no city support in sight, an already financially vulnerable population is in an even more precarious situation.

    Ensuring that all New Yorkers have adequate resources is central to the well-being and recovery of New York City’s businesses, workforce, and neighborhoods. Seventy-nine percent of undocumented New Yorkers are part of the city’s labor force, compared to 64.4% of the city’s general population. Forty-eight percent of New York’s small businesses, the heart of the city’s local economy, are owned by immigrants. Immigrant businesses are providing lifelines for New Yorkers throughout the pandemic and will be vital to any economic recovery. Despite this, undocumented business owners were excluded from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL). Earlier small business emergency programs offered by New York City ran out of money quickly, and ANHD’s member organizations that serve businesses throughout the city have reported that English-only application forms are inaccessible to many immigrant business owners.

    Immigrant New Yorkers have kept our city running throughout this pandemic. The Center for Migration Studies reports that 52.2% of the city’s essential workforce are immigrants. Seventy-one percent of the state’s undocumented labor force works in essential businesses.  Yet many immigrant New Yorkers and their families have been excluded from vital resources that are especially necessary at a time when businesses were forced to close and rent payments still loom. For many of those who are still employed, making ends meet means risking their safety and the safety of their communities in frontline occupations.

    Other states and municipalities across the country are filling the gap created by the federal government by committing significant resources to undocumented residents. Austin, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles have all allocated money to a fund for those excluded from the CARES Act.  The state of California launched its $125 million fund this week. If New York City’s goal is to equitably provide resources to all New York residents - especially its essential workers - it must commit to more.

    New York is proud to call itself a “sanctuary city,” yet the City has done little in this time of crisis to ensure that the basic needs of its undocumented workers and tenants are met. The City needs to allocate significant funding for undocumented New Yorkers and prioritize getting City and private dollars to those in need who are not and will not be able to acess federal resources. The City must commit to its immigrant residents who are keeping our city alive at great risk to themselves and their families.

     

    [1] Based on population figures reported by State of Our Immigrant City, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Annual Report for Calendar Year 2019, March 2020. Estimated cost based on one time $1200 CARES payments for adults and one time $500 payments for children.

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