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Use the supremum norm barrier for an elliptic Dirichlet problem to obtain a domain-only constant $C_{\Omega }=e^{2d}$. Split the coefficient as $c=c_{-}+c_{+}$, where $c_{-}\le 0$ and $c_{+}=\max (c,0)$. Both parts are Hölder continuous functions. ChooseIf $u$ solves the homogeneous zero-boundary problem for $\Delta +c$, thenPart (a), applied to this nonpositive zeroth-order coefficient, givesHence $u=0$. The Fredholm alternative for an elliptic Dirichlet problem now gives existence and uniqueness for every forcing and boundary datum in the stated Hölder spaces. This proves the small positive zeroth-order perturbation of a Dirichlet problem without imposing a bound on the negative part of $c$. The value of $ϵ$ need not be optimal.