Black and Latino owners hold somewhere between 65% and 75% of registered businesses in the Bronx, according to Census estimates. In the 2022 fiscal year, Black-owned vendors and Latino-owned vendors each received less than 2% of New York City’s contract dollars, by the city comptroller’s own count.
That gap is the backdrop to a summit the Bronx Chamber of Commerce is holding on Friday, which it is calling Bronx Forward: Setting the 2027 Agenda for Bronx Business. It runs from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Maestro’s Caterers on Bronxdale Avenue, and registration is open to the public, with an option to submit questions for lawmakers in advance.
The people the chamber has invited are most of the borough’s delegation. Representatives Ritchie Torres and George Latimer are expected, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Gov. Kathy Hochul sending representatives. Four state senators, eight assembly members, four city council members and Borough President Vanessa Gibson round out the list.
What the owners are bringing is a cost list rather than a policy. Rent, insurance, labour and compliance stack up, and the chamber says members are asking whether they can still afford employee benefits at all, and struggling to hold on to workers and keep up with regulatory requirements. Economic uncertainty has made it hard to plan investment.
Why this matters here: more than 80% of Bronx businesses are small operations, and in a borough where Black and Latino owners hold most of them, a cost squeeze lands disproportionately on Black and Latino households. Latino-owned businesses account for 40% to 45% of the total and Black-owned businesses 25% to 30%.
There is precedent for what a squeeze does. An analysis published in 2020 by the Center for an Urban Future found that the number of Latino-owned Bronx businesses with employees fell 23% between 2012 and 2017, a period with no pandemic in it.
Lisa Sorin, the chamber’s president, framed the stake as a neighbourhood one rather than a balance-sheet one, pointing out that when a business closes the loss runs past the family that owned it. “Residents depend on that,” she said.
The procurement figure is the one with a lever attached to it. City contracting is set by the city, and the comptroller publishes the numbers every year. The summit’s stated purpose is to set an agenda for 2027, which is a budget year.
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