Brookline Companies Received $71.2M In Federal Coronavirus Loans

BROOKLINE, MA — Companies in Brookline received $71.2 million in loan approvals under the federal Paycheck Protection Program, according to data released Tuesday by the Small Business Administration.

The loans went to 990 companies and nonprofits and ranged from $675 to $3.5 million. Applicants said the loans would help them protect 5,856 jobs in Brookline.

"The PPP money was incredibly helpful because we got it early on when we really didn't know how things were going to evolve, and we were making huge transformations in our programs to be able to adjust to be able to provide service virtually," said CEO of MAB Community Services and the Ivy Street School Barbara Salisbury.

Salisbury said the $3.5 million went far for the nonprofit that employs nearly 500, none of which they had to lay off.

"It was so great to be able to give staff assurance that they weren't going to be laid off and address concerns they had about health risks.

"We were able to very quickly pivot, but if weren't for the PPP money we just wouldn't have had the security to make all those changes and put those things in place and do the right thing," she said.

Salisbury said the nonprofit first closed a number of programs, including one designed for the blind and visually impaired because it had to do with going into homes and working with people one on one.

"Then we realized we serve 1,600 people in that program and most of them being elderly blind people whose normal support system was totally disrupted so what we did was we totally pivoted and contacted each one of those people and found out if they were having trouble getting groceries and medications and if they were we were able to connect them to resources or have our own staff and volunteers meet the need," she said.

The organization also serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities across 27 group homes, but the individuals they serve usually spend the bulk of the day at day centers. When those closed, the organization was able to repurpose staff to support the people in their homes, too.

It was not their usual program but the organization was able to meet a need created by the pandemic, she said.

The data released this week includes all loans under the program passed in March as the coronavirus pandemic took hold and forced widespread business closures and layoffs. SBA released some loan data in July, but that data only showed loans over $150,000 and did not include specific dollar amounts.

The Washington Post, Bloomberg and other media companies sued the SBA to release the full data set. In November, a federal judge ruled in favor of the media companies and ordered the SBA to release the data by Dec. 1. The data released Tuesday was current as of Nov. 24 and includes updates to the data released in July.

PPP loans are part of the CARES Act, a comprehensive COVID-19 relief package Congress passed in the spring. The loans are forgivable as long as a certain percentage is used for payroll. The program stopped taking new applications in August, but business groups are pressuring federal lawmakers and the Trump administration to renew the program.

In Brookline, the top loans went to:

• $ 3,500,000 MAB COMMUNITY SERVICES, INC. 200 IVY ST
• $ 2,992,389 PARK SCHOOL CORPORATION 171 Goddard Ave
• $ 2,848,336.50 FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES, INC. 16 HURD RD
• $ 1,820,400 MAIMONIDES SCHOOL 34 Philbrick Road
• $ 1,090,000 BROOKLINE COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH CENTER, INC. 41 GARRISON RD

Salisbury said another thing that was helpful about the PPP loans, was that because of the nonprofit's relationship with her bank, East Boston Savings bank, they were able to get the money quickly.

"We are not a huge nonprofit and the fact that we were able to get the money and get it so quickly it was really a partnership with our bank," she said. "This whole period was just so unprecedented I've never seen anything like this at all."

Statewide, there were nearly 118,000 loans totaling $14.27 billion. In their loan applications, the companies that received the loans said they would help protect 1.17 million jobs in Massachusetts.