A Faint Pulse on Main Street | Make the Road New York

January 29, 2010

A Faint Pulse on Main Street

By Jeff Harrell / Staten Island Advance

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- If Sherrian Cumberbatch can't secure a loan to put a deposit down on a skyrocketing water bill, she may have to shut down the Laundromat she has owned and operated in Port Richmond for the past 19 years.

"People are not coming in like they used to," said Ms. Cumberbatch, owner of the Bright Star Laundromat at 176 Port Richmond Ave. She said business is down more than half over the past year.

"Your business is your job," she added. "If your business goes, then you have to go back into the community for a job."

As the nation's unemployment rate hovers above 10 percent and small-business owners fight to maintain their livelihood in lower-income areas that have been decimated by the recession, Ms. Cumberbatch and several residents gathered inside a Port Richmond hair salon yesterday, carrying signs and chanting in Spanish with President Obama's State of the Union repeat of his campaign promise to create new jobs ringing fresh from Wednesday night.

"(The president) said a lot of things about generating jobs, but we haven't seen anything here," said Sara Dominguez, manager of La Nueva Imagen Beauty Salon at 464 Port Richmond Ave, the site of yesterday's gathering for the release of a report by the Make the Road New York organization.

The report showed that while Wall Street continues to thrive with the bailout, Main Street, U.S.A. is dying with an overwhelming per- centage of customers or business lost due to the reces-sion.

"It's gone way down. It's very noticeable," Ms. Dominguez said of her salon's plummeting business in Port Richmond. "There's no work, so nobody has any money to get their hair cut."

The report, titled "Main Street Policy Pulse: Small Business Views on Financial Reform," is based on a survey of more than 1,200 small business owners from 14 states, including New York.

Those polled said banks pose the biggest obstacle to keeping a small business on solid financial ground, and 67 percent support the creation of a consumer financial protection agency.

Asked about the impacts of the recession on small businesses, 71 percent said they lost customers or business due to the recession; 41 percent used personal savings or credit cards to cover expenses; 32 percent have seen their business' credit card terms deteriorate; 9 percent accepted a loan at a higher interest rate; 14 percent have been turned down by a new lender; and 15 percent have been rejected by a past lender.

Make the Road New York organizer Gouri Goyal said the lack of support from banks is causing the small business owner, particularly the minority or immigrant small business owner, to get "hit twice" since access to credit and lending has dried up, and the customer base has been hit by job loss, loss of the home, or both.

"A double-squeeze, if you will," said Ms Goyal, of Manhattan. "Right now everything seems to be frozen. "It's like, we applied for good credit, but Wall Street gets this huge bailout and Main Street gets left behind."

And ignored.

Funding a small business is tough enough, especially during a recession. When an immigrant business owner walks into a mainstream bank to apply for a loan, it's nearly impossible to speak with a lender, said Sam Owusu-Sekyere, secretary of the Ghanaian Civic Association.

"There's nobody to tell them who to go see when the doors open," Owusu-Sekyere, of New Brighton, said. "We believe the banks should be more open-minded. If our taxes are helping them, they should be more open to helping us."