CINCINNATI, Ohio — A second round of checks will go out to struggling businesses in Southwest Ohio.


What You Need To Know

  • Hamilton County Commissioners are making more than $5 million more available in small business grants

  • Small businesses can get up to $10,000 each

  • Hamilton County will start taking grant applications in the next few weeks

The move could impact owners like Lincoln Lyle. He cuts hair for a living and owns a barber shop in Cincinnati, but he says business just hasn’t been the same.

“The impact was tremendous, because a lot of my customers left, they were kinda scared to get this COVID-19,” said Lyle, owner of D1FF Hair Studio.

He says he only makes just enough to keep the doors open and he worries how long that will last.

“I still have to pay bills and still have to take care of family things, and without customers, there’s really nothing we can do,” said Lyle.

He says he's tried for business loans and stimulus money with no luck.

“These large corporations that have a hundred or more employees, they don’t need it, but I'm hearing they’re getting it, so us, we’re kinda just left out, hoping we get it,” said Lyle.

But Hamilton County did get federal stimulus money through the CARES Act. So far the county used $1.6M of it to give grants to small businesses.

“We allocated more, but because of the perimeters that we placed on that, we spent less,” said Hamilton County Presiding Commissioner Denise Driehaus.

It’s part of the reason commissioners announced this week they’d be giving out more money — more than $5M in a second round of grants to small businesses.  

“The next round will expand those perimeters so that more businesses can apply be eligible and so more businesses can get more money,” said Driehaus.

That means more small businesses, with less than 10 workers, will be eligible to get up to $10,000 in grant money.

The county expects to start taking applications for the second round of grants in the next few weeks.

Lyle says hopes his barber shop will be one of them.

“Oh my God, that would help tremendous, that would help a lot,”said Lyle.