Mapping the COVID-19 Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program for select towns in Northern New Jersey

The interactive dashboard can be found here.

In 2020 & 2021 the federal government issued 2,376 loans (SBA PPP program) worth over $118M to my hometown of Fort Lee, NJ entities. Over 97% of these loans were forgiven. Each “loan” ranged from $234 to $2,186,200. Many of these entities collected loans twice (one for each PPP round). You can view the list of entities in a dashboard linked above.

 

I expanded the data to two other surrounding towns (Edgewater, NJ and Cliffside Park, NJ). In total, all three towns collected $184M in forgivable loans. All these loans account for only 0.0233% of the total PPP program.

As the dust settled post the COVID-19 panic many of the businesses that received forgivable loans faced scrutiny.  NBC news wrote an extensive piece (“Biggest fraud in a generation”: The looting of the Covid relief plan known as PPP“). The article references the Small Business Administrator’s inspector general that has identified $78.1 billion in potential fraudulent loans. The secret services estimates $100 billion.