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WASHINGTON - About $1 of every $5 in loans the Small Business Administration directly made to companies hurt by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has fallen into default, leaving the government with an uphill effort to recover millions of dollars in taxpayer money.
The agency is just now learning about the magnitude of businesses that went under or stopped making payments. Its Sept. 11 direct disaster loan program often gave recipients two years before their first payments were due, according to documents.
The SBA directly lent $1.2-billion to more than 10,000 companies that made specific arguments about how their businesses were hurt by the suicide hijackings in 2001 that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon in suburban Washington. Another plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
Of that amount, $245-million is in default, the records show. The SBA investigators consider a loan in default if it has been charged off or liquidated or is more than 60 days delinquent.
SBA officials say they have written off less than $10-million of the default total and will make strong efforts to recover much of the rest of the money by collecting collateral, negotiating settlements with borrowers or bringing delinquent loans up to date.
The $245-million "does not represent the actual loss to the government, which, because of settlements and recoveries on collateral, will be less than this amount," SBA spokesman Michael Stamler said.
Among the loans already written off are a $992,000 loan made to an Atlanta hotel, $986,000 to a Florida boat dealer, $620,000 to a Maine broccoli farm and $38,900 to a Texas computer store.
Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who represents New York City and is the top Democrat on the House Small Business Committee, wants the SBA to extend the period of time before companies are required to make loan payments.
"A lot of these companies are just beginning to have to pay back their loans," said Velazquez. "What is the government going to tell them when they can't?"
Historically, other government disaster lending programs have written off about 5 percent of loans. The largest SBA write-off in the last quarter-century came in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when taxpayers absorbed $122-million of $356-million in loans, slightly more than a third.