In Chicago’s Little Village, federal aid begins to flow. Is it enough?
It’s afternoon at Nuevo Leon, a popular restaurant in the once bustling immigrant neighborhood of Little Village, a roughly 3-square-mile slice of Chicago’s West Side. Now the room is empty, the furniture pushed to one side. The owner, Laura Gutierrez, sits alone at a small table where she takes the orders that trickle in each day over the phone.
“Sure, my love,” she says, “What would you like? The cold dinner? Anything else?”
Her surface cheer conceals a deeper gloom. The coronavirus and its economic pain have fallen hard upon Little Village, where many of its hundreds of businesses – restaurants, cafés, , hair salons, dollar stores, travel agencies, groceries, jewelers, dress boutiques, roofing companies, and more – are either closed or hardly working. Sales
Not everyone qualifiesLots of business, less profit
