SAN ANTONIO — Every morning, Gilbert De Hoyos serves up coffee, jokes and barbacoa and grilled cheese sandwiches at his coffee shop Barrio Barista.
He says it was a vision that was helped to be brought to life by Prosper West, a nonprofit community development organization, and Lift Fund, a San Antonio-based nonprofit, which helped him with a 0% interest loan.
“To be able to use and have them at our side, for without them, we would not have grown as swiftly as we have,” De Hoyos said.
Rebeca Canizales, a director at Prosper West, helps simplify a business world filled with complicated terminology.
“A lot of the processes really are truly built to be difficult, so it’s our job to make sure to dismantle and unravel all of those processes for them,” Canizales said.
While she works to make it easy for entrepreneurs, she says the government shutdown isn’t making it easy for organizations like hers. Small Business Administration (SBA) services are unavailable due to the government shutdown. She says recent loan applications are at a standstill.
“One of the things we do through our program is we help people find access to capital. The SBA is one of the biggest resources used in order to obtain access to capital,” Canizales said. “There’s a possibility that a business owner might not ever hear back from or about that application.”
Adrian Gonzalez — the chief Certified Development Company (CDC) officer for Lift Fund — says almost all of those loans are for Texas businesses. The last government shutdown proved to be troublesome for businesses waiting for funding. Lift Fund, which operates in 13 states, is waiting for the government to reopen.
“We currently have 12 loan requests that are stalled because we are not able to get processed through SBA. That’s about $12 to $13 million in deals,” Gonzalez said. “We waited at the doorstep and we submitted, but turnaround time went from 7 to 10 days to 30-45 days.”
He says that doesn’t include the time it takes to close a deal, which could total as much as 120 days.
“Most of them are existing businesses that have a track record that they can probably weather the storm. Now, if this were to go 60 or 90 days? Then maybe we are looking at a different situation,” he said.
A situation Gilbert De Hoyos says will set businesses back.
