PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — It has been a brutal two years for Portland businesses. Amid pandemic challenges, unprecedented wildfires, and a rise in violent burglaries, many shops have turned to federal relief to survive — but relief for Oregon’s profitable cannabis market has remained unavailable, until now.  

As of February, Portland’s cannabis businesses can now apply for grants under the city’s new Cannabis Emergency Relief Fund (CERF), which was approved by Portland City Council in December. 

The one-time grants are funded by the cannabis tax revenue, making Portland the first government entity in the U.S. to support business recovery within the cannabis industry, according to the city’s Office of Community & Civic Life.

In lieu of federal funding, the $1.3 million CERF offers financial relief for the city’s cannabis shops by distributing one-time grants of up to $25,000 for eligible Portland businesses, and up to $5,000 to industry workers who have experienced emotional or financial hardship due to COVID-19, vandalism, robberies, and wildfires.

According to the city’s website, Portland’s Cannabis Program will also grant eligible establishments who need help staying in compliance up to $200,000 in waivers for prior year licensing fees. 

“Oregon’s cannabis businesses, primarily locally-owned small businesses, were ineligible to access federal relief funding for disasters or emergencies. Bank funding is also largely unavailable to cannabis businesses due to federal prohibition,” The City stated.  “These issues led to the City’s Cannabis Program collaborating with multiple cannabis community-based organizations to creatively ensure the industry’s future economic success.”

Recently, Civic Life partnered with the following three community-based organizations to open and oversee the grant application process:

• NuProject
• The Initiative
• Oregon Cannabis Association

“These funds are a smart investment, needed now to retain a strong, local cannabis economy populated with diverse-owned companies,” NuProject CEO Jeannette Ward Horton stated. “The CERF program gets the  ‘what’ right – an equitable investment – and the ‘ how’ – granting funds to culturally-specific organizations to build capacity in serving Portland’s historically excluded communities.  Aligned to this, all individual grants will be serviced via a partnership between NuProject and Cannabis Workers Coalition (CWC), an organization with a mission to protect and advance equitable workers’ rights.” 

CERF grant applications became available to the public on Feb. 1, and are slated to be reviewed and accepted on a ‘rolling basis’ until the end of the fiscal year or all funds have been disbursed.

During the City Council meeting that resulted in the approval of CERF, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said, “I want to thank the Office of Community & Civic Life for once again being innovative and visionary about how to support the survival of these small businesses. I can never talk about the cannabis industry without stressing that it is the only business in our state that pays 85% of their dollars in taxes yet is legally unable to bank like everyone else in the state.”

As the CEO and founder of the NuProject, one of the three organizations tasked with processing CERF applications, Horton told KOIN 6 News these grants are not only an opportunity to aid Portland’s struggling cannabis businesses but also an opportunity to help increase wealth equity.

 “The City of Portland was really an early model to say this new revenue source can create economic justice and repair the economic harm that was done (and continues) under the war on drugs and the prohibition of cannabis,” Horton explained. “The idea is that we do advocacy around how cannabis taxes work to repair that harm and then we use these taxes to fund small businesses and to help create some equity that helps repair the economic harm for these communities.”

She continued, “These kinds of grants really help to address this wide gap we see in terms of startup funding for black founders, and Native American founders and women founders who start off businesses with far less capital than other founders.”

For details on CERF eligibility and applications visit here.