New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy announced a $6 million lease emergency assistance grant program to assist small businesses with up to $10,000 in direct help to pay their rents.
The grants, a New Jersey Redevelopment Authority (NJRA) initiative, will help small businesses in 64 communities covered by the authority. The grants will be paid for through federal CARES act funding, Murphy said.
"We will not let Covid-19 take us down," Murphy said Thursday.
"We cannot get to where we need to be and where we know we will be without the women and men who own and operate the small businesses that make a municipality a community and turn a street into a gathering place for that community," he added.
Speaking at the news conference, Leslie Anderson, president and CEO of the NJRA, emphasized that this is a grant and not a loan, meaning businesses are not obligated to pay it back. Anderson also said that businesses cannot exceed 5,000 square feet in order to be eligible for the grant, a requirement the authority is enforcing in order to ensure only small businesses benefit from the grant.
Murphy also reported during the news conference that over the last four months, 1.4 million New Jersey residents have filed claims for unemployment, "including 26,000 over the prior week."
This is the second straight week the state has seen a "significant decline" in unemployment filings, said Murphy.
The latest numbers: There are 344 new Covid-19 cases and 23 deaths in the state, said Murphy. The positivity rate is 2.88%.
Note: These numbers were released by the county public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.