SAN FRANCISCO—In honor of San Francisco Small Business Week—an annual celebration of more than 85,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs in the city—Mayor Edwin Lee announced a new loan program with $12 million available to lend local small businesses.

The program, aptly called Emerging Business Loan Fund (EBLF), intends to stimulate the local economy by creating another means of funding for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Eligible businesses can apply for loans ranging from $50,000 to $1 million in order to cover a variety of operational, staffing and real estate costs.

The EBLF program was created with the use of pre-existing funding from the Small Business Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 108 program.

By Kyle Maloney