FOUND/LA Small Business Recovery Fund: Eligible business owners based on the criteria below can apply for grant support from FOUND/LA through one of our operating partners during open application windows. Applicants will submit complete applications and required documents. Those who meet the eligibility requirements will be entered into a pool of eligible applicants. On designated selection days, grant recipients will be randomly selected from this pool until all funds are expended. The size of the grant will be between $5,000 and $25,000 depending on the size of the business. For questions, email hello@foundla.org. Eligible business owners can apply with ONE of our partners. Applicants who apply with both organizations will not be eligible for grant funding. Businesses with 1 – 5 employees should apply with TMC Community Capital. Businesses with 6 – 20 employees should apply with Pacific Community Ventures.
Round 2: Application Window Opens Monday, January 11, 2021 @ 9:00am. Application Window Closes Sunday, January 17, 2021 @ 11:59pm. Winners Selected: Monday, January 18, 2021
https://www.foundla.org/covid-recovery-fund-for-small-businesses/
Mini-Grants for Black Owned Businesses in partnership with Los Angeles Urban League: Attention Black Business owners: The Los Angeles Urban League has programs specifically to help our community during this time. Please register to become a client by filling out the form at this link: https://www.laul.org/ec-registration/. As a client, you will receive an initial hour of free business counseling once you complete the intake form.
The Urban League also provides mini-grants to Black-owned small businesses via our Emergency Capital Access Program (ECAP). Eligible businesses will have: at least 51% or higher African American-ownership; be a legally registered For-Profit entity; in business before March 1, 2019, with primary business address in Los Angeles County; report no more than $150,000 in net profit for the previous fiscal year. To begin the counseling process to see if you qualify for the mini-grant, please complete the form by clicking the link: Click Here to Register + Apply
COVID Recovery Loan Program from TMC Community Capital: We are launching this program to support California’s small businesses—especially those located in economically disadvantaged and historically under-banked areas of the state. The loans are flexible, transparent and are designed to help businesses access the capital and advisory services they need to get through these challenging economic times. Please note, this program is not associated with the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or any other SBA program. The loans are not forgivable in part or whole. The loans will need to be paid back over a 2- to 5-year term with a fixed annual interest rate. Click Here to Learn More + Apply
Pasadena: As of Saturday, Pasadena has seen a total of 4729 cases among our residents with 139 fatalities. On Saturday, an additional 114 cases were reported with no new fatalities among Pasadenans. One newfatality was reprted on Friday. Pasadena health officials reported 122 new detected COVID-19 infections on Thursday, exceeding the previous all-time high, which was reported Sunday. No additional fatalities were reported in the city. Thursday’s count raised the city’s overall infections to 4,536, while the local death toll held at 138. The city’s average number of daily cases over the previous week also reached a new high of 94.4, according to city data.
On Thursday, Huntington Hospital, officials reported a record high number of 95 COVID-19 patients were being treated, with 18 of them in intensive care units.
The five-day average of cases is 10,034, compared to 2,134 a month ago — a jump of 370%, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health.
A month ago, the five-day average of deaths was 12. As of Saturday, the average had climbed to 62, a 416% increase.
Los Angeles County’s intensive care unit capacity rate fell to 7.7% on Thursday, less than half of the 15% capacity that triggered the current regional stay-at-home order, according to the California Department of Public Health.
Thursday, the L.A. County Department of Public Health also reported a new record number of COVID-19 infections at 12,819. Officials also reported 74 new deaths, including the first death of a child with the COVID-19-related illness MIS-C.
Since the onset of the pandemic, L.A. County had recorded a total of 487,917 cases of novel coronavirus and 9,149 fatalities. In another new record, 3,433 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county on Thursday, officials said. Twenty-three percent of them were being treated in intensive care units. Hospitals in Los Angeles are under huge pressure to deal with hundreds of new coronavirus patients a day, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said in a news release Saturday.
"This is an extraordinarily challenging time. Hospitals are stressed and filling up with hundreds of new Covid-19 positive patients each day, our healthcare workers are exhausted, and deaths are reaching an all-time high," Ferrer said. A month ago, the 5-day average of cases was 2,134. On Saturday, the 5-day average was 10,034. According to the release, this is an increase of 370% in one month.
As of Thursday, L.A. County represented 36% of California’s total COVID-19 cases and 40% of the state’s fatalities.
The first shipment of 83,000 vaccines was expected to arrive in L.A. County next week, with the initial doses expected to go to healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents, county officials said. The initial allocation will be sent to nine sites across the county with ultracold freezers, a requirement for the Pfizer vaccine. Vaccine will then be distributed to 83 acute care hospitals across the county and administered to healthcare workers prioritized based on risk. As the vaccines become increasingly available, officials will first prioritize seniors and those with chronic health conditions, authorities added. Wide availability for the general public was not expected until the summer.
California: California’s Covid-19 surge continues to break case count records, with increased hospitalizations, and intensive care unit admissions, according to new data released by the state’s public health department on Saturday. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) reported 35,729 new coronavirus cases on Saturday—breaking the record set on Friday of 35,468 new cases.
The number of new coronavirus cases across the state has sharply increased since the beginning of the week. The state’s average positivity rate over the prior week was 10%, with the 140-day average measured at 9%, according to a CDPH statement.
U.S.: There have been at least 16,014,839 cases of coronavirus in the US and at least 297,501 people have died from Covid-19, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. It took the US 268 days to reach 8 million Covid-19 cases, according to university data. It only took the nation 57 days to reach the second 8 million cases.
The US reported 108,487 current Covid-19 hospitalizations on Saturday, setting a new record high, according to the Covid Tracking Project (CTP). This is the 11th consecutive day that hospitalizations in the US has remained above 100,000. Here are the hospitalization numbers for the past five days, according to the CTP:
- December 12: 108,487
- December 11: 108,044
- December 10: 107,258
- December 9: 106,705
- December 8: 104,590
From Fair Warning: A widely circulated list ranking the deadliest days in American history is picked apart here by Slate for leaving some things out, but the point remains that Covid deaths on several days this month have been higher than from the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2,403 people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that number has been surpassed on multiple days in December, including on Wednesday, when Covid claimed 3,411 lives–far and away a record and more than from the September 11, 2001 attacks.
“The epidemic in the U.S. is punishing,” Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization’s chief of emergencies, told the Associated Press. “It’s quite frankly shocking to see one to two persons a minute die in the U.S. — a country with a wonderful, strong health system, amazing technological capacities.”
More than 292,000 people in the U.S. have died of the coronavirus, nearly one-fifth of the world’s total, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington forecasts that 500,000 people in the United States will have died from coronavirus by April—but if mask use increased to 95 percent, it could save 56,000 lives, CNN reports.
Also: The vaccine advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration voted to recommend the agency authorize the Pfizer and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, CNN reports. The FDA is expected to issue the authorization on Saturday, The New York Times reports, and the first vaccinations of health care workers and nursing home residents could happen as early as next week. Canada became the third country to approve the use of the Pfizer vaccine, after the United Kingdom and Bahrain, The Wall Street Journal reports, and Canadian officials said they will make a decision about the Moderna vaccine soon.
On Thursday, California’s new contact tracing system, CA Notify, went live. If you missed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement, it is essentially a smartphone feature you can opt into that will notify you of potential coronavirus exposure by using Bluetooth to detect which phones have been within several feet of one another for a certain amount of time.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been ramping up enforcement of coronavirus safety precautions after taking a hands-off approach earlier in the year, Amy Martyn reports for FairWarning.
But a review of OSHA inspections reveals the agency is mostly responding to deaths or hospitalizations, as required by law, not identifying unsafe working conditions before more people get infected and possibly die. Under the Trump administration, the number of OSHA inspectors has fallen to record lows, while key positions have gone unfilled.
The U.S. economic recovery is likely to slow further before the impact of expected approvals of Covid-19 vaccines makes itself felt in the second quarter of 2021, a new Wall Street Journal survey shows. In the latest monthly survey of business and academic economists, forecasters slashed their projections for economic growth and job creation in the first quarter, amid a surge in corona-virus cases. A number of economists said they expect coronavirus caseloads to remain high in the first quarter of 2021 because vaccines will take time to be distributed across the U.S.
On average, economists expect the economy to expand at a 1.9% annual rate from January to March, down from 3.3% growth in November’s survey. Economists forecast the labor market will add just under 295,000 new jobs a month in the first quarter, down from over 440,000 a month in the November survey.
The number of workers seeking unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, climbed sharply by 137,000 to 853,000 last week, the Labor Department reported. The level of applications was the highest since September, but still well down from a peak of nearly seven million in late March. The number of applications for a separate federal pandemic program also rose sharply last week.
The claims figures add to signs the recovery continues, but at a cooler pace. Job growth eased in November and the number of job openings edged down in early December. The labor market’s partial rebound has been a key component in the overall economic recovery from a pandemic-related downturn in the spring.
Consumer spending rose in October for the sixth straight month, though at a slower pace, according to the Commerce Department. The manufacturing and services sectors expanded in November, according to the Institute for Supply Management.
U.S. stocks fell Thursday after the unemployment-claims figures were released.
Top Senate Republicans signaled Thursday they wouldn’t accept a bipartisan group’s efforts to craft a compromise on state and local governments and liability protections during the pandemic, undercutting the coalition’s attempt to break the months-long impasse over a coronavirus relief package.
Democrats continued to throw their support behind the bipartisan group working on a $908 billion proposal, leaving in question whether they would be willing to support an aid bill without funding for states and localities.
Europe: The European Central Bank scaled up its emergency bond-buying program by more than a third and unveiled a new batch of ultra-cheap loans for banks, a bold stimulus package aimed at backstopping the region’s governments and businesses as they navigate a stubborn resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The move, which takes the ECB’s monetary stimulus this year above €3 trillion ($3.63 trillion) underscores the rocky path ahead for the 19-nation eurozone economy. Europe has been hit much harder than the U.S. and other advanced economies as strict lockdowns have repeatedly closed businesses and hurt the south’s large tourism industry.
Together with a new €750 billion joint fund that European Union leaders signed off on Thursday evening, after Hungary and Poland dropped their concerns about a mechanism that could have deprived them of future budget funds, the ECB’s decision signals Europe’s willingness to combat this year’s economic downturn using new debt. That marks a shift in strategy from the region’s debt crisis a decade ago, when many governments sought quickly to tighten purse strings.
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For the first time ever, the median price of single family homes sold in Pasadena has exceeded $1 million, according to 2020/2021 property tax data provided to the city by a consultant and published last week. Sale prices have risen as the number of sales declined significantly due to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. The smaller inventory and lower interest rates from January through September drove the median sale price of a detached single-family residential home in Pasadena up to $1,050,000, a $93,000 (9.7 percent) increase in median sale price from 2019.