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At a virtual Town Hall with Hollywood, Atwater Village, Echo Park and Silver Lake Chambers, L.A. City Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell and the City’s Economic and Workforce Development Department (EWDD) announced the launch of the 13th District Small Business Grant Program to help business owners pay bills.

Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has allocated $1 million of discretionary funding to kickstart the grant program to assist small businesses in the 13th District. Historically, discretionary funding would have been utilized for other purposes such as public infrastructure projects.

**Applications will be accepted starting Thursday, August 13 at 8 AM, and ending Monday, August 17, at 11:59PM (online). The application can be found here — https://cd13.lacity.org/grant***

“Our small businesses continue to experience serious hardships and devastation because of the pandemic,” said Councilmember O’Farrell. “This financial assistance helps retain workers while enabling some small and independent business owners to survive.”

The City’s Economic and Workforce Development Department (EWDD) is the program manager and has the following requirements:

• Must have an established business in the 13th District [must be in a commercial building]
• Must have “active” status with CA Secretary of State
• Must provide documents in the application (current BTRC, W-9, etc.) 
• Must have at least three and up to 26 employees
• Economically affected by COVID-19

**Acelera Financial is providing technical assistance starting today – August 6 – to answer questions about the application process. For more information, contact Acelera by email: TA@acelerafinancial.com or call (213) 410-5099.

Councilmember O’Farrell and his colleagues have also taken the following actions to assist small business owners:

• Councilmember O’Farrell has refined the Right-of-Recall Ordinance, which ensures workers who are laid off due to the pandemic have the opportunity to regain their jobs once emergency orders are lifted. O’Farrell fought for extra protection for restaurants, coffee shops, bars, nightclubs and wine bars not located in a hotel or event space, and expanded the job notification requirement to include email and text messages to notify former employees when work is available.
• Introduced a resolution that supports federal legislation to fix the Paycheck Protection Program to assist our small business owners.
• Led the initiative to make it unlawful for a third-party food delivery service app (e.g. Grubhub, Doordash, etc.) to charge more than 15% for the delivery, and more than 5% for all other fees. 

In addition to the measures mentioned above, Mitch has taken the following actions to protect commercial tenants:

• Helped lead a unanimous vote to waive late fees on rent.
• Extended eviction protections and the payback period to three months for commercial tenants. The ordinance pertains to all Angelenos, regardless of immigration status. 
• Approved amendment to COVID-19 related renter protections that allow tenants a Right of Action to sue landlords who ignore and maliciously violate any of the city’s protections during the pandemic.
• Won unanimous support for his resolution that calls on Congress to include rent and mortgage relief paired together in the next federal package, including extending payment or forgiveness assistance to renters and property owners impacted by COVID-19.
• Instructed a review of all federal and state legislation pertaining to emergency aid, with the goal of providing additional assistance by the City to ‘fill the gaps’ in aid for immigrant and undocumented Angelenos.

This work is in addition to Council action taken to assist residential tenants in the 13th District and across the City of Los Angeles. For a complete summary of protections for Angelenos, please visit CD13.com.