Small Businesses Look To Albany For Rent Relief
arrow Yeworkwoha Ephrem outside her restaurant Ghenet Beth Fertig / WNYC
Before the pandemic, Yeworkwoha Ephrem paid $9,800 a month in rent for her Ethiopian restaurant Ghenet, in Brooklyn’s Park Slope. But after COVID-19 shut down the city in March, Ephrem said she wasn’t able to pay her landlord. Unlike other restaurants, she could not build a sidewalk dining space and said there weren’t enough deliveries and takeout orders to bring her business back to anything resembling normal.
“I really felt guilty,” she said, sitting in her empty restaurant that used to be able to host up to 65 people.