STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This week, the Small Business Administration began accepting applications for the second round of emergency loans for organizations affected by the coronavirus epidemic. The program is available to houses of worship, but access to the money has been uneven. NPR's Tom Gjelten says many African American churches have been left out.
TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE: Like other enterprises, churches and mosques and synagogues have payrolls to meet and bills to pay. Those without cash reserves are in trouble.
JAMES PERKINS: In my own case, I had to lay off employees.
GJELTEN: James Perkins is the senior pastor at Greater Christ Baptist Church in Detroit.
PERKINS: We, you know, have on salary about nine employees. And I had to lay most of them off. And the ones that I contained, I had to cut their salaries in half.
GJELTEN: Perkins' congregation is African American. He applied for one of the paycheck protection loans from the Small Business Administration but was rejected. Reverend Kenneth Flowers, the pastor at Greater New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist, also in Detroit, didn't even get to square one with his bank.
KENNETH FLOWERS: They kept saying, we're not receiving applications. We will send you an email. They never sent an email stating they were receiving applications. Then we get an email saying all the funds have been deployed.
GJELTEN: The SBA has never before extended loans to religious institutions but did so in this situation because so many houses of worship are suffering. Many have benefited, but African American churches may be an exception. Derrick Johnson is president of the NAACP.
DERRICK JOHNSON: We have representation from all nine of our major African American denominations. Most of them have complained because of the lack of responsiveness from the banks they've submitted their applications to. And these churches from San Francisco to Detroit to Florida to Connecticut.
GJELTEN: Some big businesses, meanwhile, have gotten millions of dollars in loans under the emergency SBA program. A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase, the top SBA lender, says her bank took a first come, first served approach. But she did acknowledge that borrowers had to be well-prepared for the application process because it was so competitive and the money dried up quickly. Pat Markey, who advises Catholic diocese financial officers, says many churches are at a disadvantage when competing with better-connected borrowers.
PAT MARKEY: Most churches do not have the kind of banking relationships that revolve around debt. When they went to banks, they weren't their normal loan customers. And so they weren't given the same attention that their regular customers were.
GJELTEN: Some Catholic churches were advantaged by having their diocese prepare the application on their behalf. Many historically black churches don't have that kind of institutional support. Markey says his organization urged parishes that were thinking of going for an emergency loan to consider whether they really needed it.
MARKEY: For Christians, we can't just take money because it's available. And so we're telling people if you need it, by all means apply. If you don't, leave it there because there's somebody else who needs it.
GJELTEN: When the SBA application window opened this week, there was again a huge rush, enough to crash the SBA website - not a good sign for the neediest churches. Tom Gjelten, NPR News.
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