Below is an excerpt from the article "Venues blocked from COVID-19 relief grants after apparent mix-up with dead people" where Nina discusses what she knows about the SBA's mishap. Read the full article here.
Nina Ozlu Tunceli, the Executive Director of Americans for the Arts Action Fund, said venue operators across the country are reporting similar issues of being mistakenly linked to dead people. In a meeting late last week with the SBA, Ozlu Tunceli said the SBA admitted employee identification numbers and the Social Security Administration's death master file should never have been cross-referenced, and the agency announced it is changing the way these grants will be processed.
"It's a surreal experience to say, 'prove that you're not dead,'" Ozlu Tunceli told 3 On Your Side. "By just changing that matrix, [the SBA] said it will go from 8,000 that were previously blocked because they were on the death master to under 30 applications. That's how many people are going to be affected."
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