“Where Is The Help?”

Trillions of dollars are flowing from Washington and through the state Capitol to help keep struggling families and businesses afloat amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Will they flow all the way down into urban neighborhoods like Dixwell and Newhallville?

Rodney Williams is watching closely — and is skeptical.

“We need help,” Williams said Friday. ​“Where is the help?”

Williams runs Green Elm Construction, a sheetrocking business based on Dixwell Avenue. He publicly advocates for other minority-run small businesses. He serves on boards and commissions and speaks out at public meetings about issues ranging from policing to economic development.

He came on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program Friday to sound the alarm bell about Covid-19 — not just about the need for people to practice social distancing to avoid its deadly spread, but about the need for government officials as well as grassroots people to ensure the financial-assistance local tap turns on from the $2 trillion-plus-and-counting federal stimulus efforts.

“Every time they pass out money,” Williams observed, ​“it doesn’t hit the ground.”

Williams noted that larger companies are best positioned to obtain payroll protection and other assistance meant to keep them in business. The state’s portal to sign up for emergency small-business assistance closed in one day, for instance. Meanwhile, Williams said, he and other small-business owners struggle with barriers to meeting the guidelines set for the aid. For instance: When they win government subcontracts, they often wait longer than 90 days to get paid. But they have to pay their workers. They struggle to maintain the credit scores required under the new aid programs.

Right now the programs have a set of rules for ​“small” businesses defined as having under 500 workers. A company with 400 workers has far more resources than a company like Williams’, which often has eight or nine people on the payroll, or up to two dozen given how many jobs it’s working.

He suggested that government set up ​“another bar” of qualifications and rules for truly small businesses like his. A ​“micro” bar. Along with staffers dedicated to reaching out better to the grassroots to help connect dollars with recipients.

“We need to figure out how we help people going forward” during the pandemic, not just with business aid, but rental and other assistance, Williams argued. ​“This country is not going to come back because big business is back in business.” It also needs ​“small businesses like me.”

Williams spoke of other inequities bared by the pandemic. He pointed to how gatherings in wealthy Fairfield County towns that spread Covid-19 through Connecticut never earned the public rebuke or action from the governor. This New York Times article recounting how attendees of an upscale Westport ​“soiree” hid their family’s subsequent infections in order to avoid social stigma.

“If that happened in Newhallville,” he said, ​“they would be air-dropping us peanut butter sandwiches.”

Click on the video below for the full interview with Rodney Williams on WNHH FM’s Dateline New Haven.” (Fast-forward to the one-minute point for the start of the episode.)