Temporary assistance for self-employed
Hi all.
I have been running a profitable business since 2012. We had one huge client who was a large portion of our revenue. We were a little too comfortable with this income, since the facilities manager we worked with was very loyal to us; we had solved many problems he had fought for years.
Anyways, after 5 years with them, we were blindsided when he retired and his replacement told us to stop service. (Lesson 1: everything changes eventually)
We have operated and lived on savings since September. We kept our employees’ hours up as much as we could, but had to cut their hours back and discontinue their health insurance in December.
This all happened just a few months before we planned to launch into a new market; we had been servicing commercial clients and decided to offer services to residential customers. We were trying to diversify our revenue before the bottom eventually dropped out.
So we have been pushing hard to start our new division and thankfully we have everything we need (except customers and advertising dollars), but our savings have run dry.
Our overhead is significant, and we have been operating at a loss for several months.
We are selling our rental house to get the equity out, and are sure that it will buy us enough time to get our revenue back up to par. But it will be at least a couple months before that deal closes.
I applied for dshs assistance for food and childcare. I have 2 young kids and we have been paying $2400 cash for daycare all this time. Now I just hope to get help for a few months.
We were approved for basic food help, but declined for childcare subsidy. The reason they gave is “your business is operating at a loss, so with the standard deduction of $100, you make too much money to qualify.”
I provided detailed financials justifying every fixed expense.
i find it strange that I qualify for food, but not childcare (even partial).
Does anyone here have any experience in this type of scenario? I wonder if appealing would be a waste of time; I am trying to build a business and don’t have time to lose.
Thanks.