Brockton Companies Received $130m in Federal Coronavirus Loans

BROCKTON, MA—Companies in Brockton received over $130 million in loan approvals under the federal Paycheck Protection Program, according to data released Tuesday by the Small Business Administration.

The loans went to 1,110 companies and ranged from $443.32 to $2,858,620.00. Applicants said the loans would help them protect 13,480 jobs in Brockton.

"The PPP gave us the confidence that we could do this and a pretty good sense of what the future would bring," said Dr. Ronald Hirschberg hospital director of Brockton Animal Hospital. "It really enabled us to do our best to see a number of patients who were turned away from other hospitals."

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 Brockton, the loans went to businesses including:

• Eco Recycling Systems, Inc.
• Ben Transportation, LLC
• Brockton Animal Hospital, LLC
• White's Pastry Shop, Inc.
• Brockton Visiting Nurse Association

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