LANSING, Mich. — 2020 has been a difficult year, to put it gently. Michigan in particular has had it hard, dealing with the same COVID-19 woes as everyone else only to be hit by the recent flooding in Midland, creating a whole new level of problems for the area.
Mercifully, when the dam broke there was not a single death as a result. While that’s good news it doesn’t mean the dam breaking was without consequence: Much of the area was destroyed by floodwaters and both homes and businesses in the region have felt the effects.
Now, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is encouraging businesses of all sizes, private nonprofit organizations, homeowners and renters to apply for a physical disaster loan before the Sept. 8, 2020 deadline. Additionally, to date SBA has approved 285 low-interest disaster loans totaling $21,245,300 for survivors in Michigan affected by severe storms and flooding on May 16-22, 2020. Anyone in the declared counties in Michigan with damages caused by the disaster should apply for a physical disaster loan by the deadline.
The disaster declaration covers Arenac, Gladwin, Iosco, Midland, Saginaw counties in Michigan which are eligible for both Physical and Economic Injury Disaster Loans from the SBA. Small businesses and most private nonprofit organizations in the following adjacent counties are eligible to apply only for SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans: Alcona, Bay, Clare, Genesee, Gratiot, Isabella, Ogemaw, Oscoda, Roscommon, Shiawassee, Tuscola in Michigan.
Due to COVID-19 the SBA will not establish a field presence to assist survivors, but the SBA will provide customer service and conduct outreach virtually with webinars, skype calls, phone assistance and step-by-step application assistance. They’ve opened a virtual loan outreach center at disasterloanassistance.sba.gov [disasterloanassistance.sba.gov] where there are virtual customer support representatives available to assist applicants with completing the online application.
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