If you want to apply for a loan from the City of Berkeley Loan Fund for small businesses, the first thing you need is a loan denial letter from a bank. For a minority-owned or woman-owned business, that’s unfortunately not hard to get, even in a supposedly progressive bastion like Berkeley.
Getting a small business loan in Berkeley has been challenging for a long time. That’s why the city established its loan fund in 1987, with a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, to provide loans for small businesses that weren’t able to get capital elsewhere.