Can you do the impossible? If not, you should not survive, or even exist!
That’s what the city is effectively saying to street vendors with its decision to send the NYPD to force street vendors to close in the Bronx, the borough with the highest unemployment rate of any county in the state last year. Hundreds of fellow New Yorkers have turned to street vending to survive the past year, becoming entrepreneurs in a difficult time. Street vendors are primarily immigrants, people of color, military veterans — exactly the New Yorkers who need our city’s support right now.
Instead, Mayor de Blasio is threatening to turn them into criminals for having the gall to try to feed their families during a pandemic. Rather than support these hardworking New Yorkers as they seek to launch businesses, the mayor has chosen to divide the business community and stamp out New York’s entrepreneurial spirit.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the real estate industry and big business interests influenced the city government to place arbitrary caps on the number of general vendor licenses (required to sell merchandise) and food vending permits (required to sell food from a cart or a truck). There are only 853 general vending licenses, and not a single person can justify why 853 licenses is the right number.
The same problem plagues mobile food vending, where there are just 5,100 permits to operate carts or trucks. A cap on the number of permits has created a devastating situation for New Yorkers who want to run a legitimate business, forcing them to either operate within an underground market (renting permits for up to $25,000, when the permit holder only pays $200 to the city) or operate without formal approval.
Thankfully, the City Council passed a bill this year to aim to phase out the terrible black market, yet for now, the unattainable licensing issue remains. Even without permits, vendors pay taxes on their businesses, have completed food-safety training course, provide jobs and run wonderful businesses — yet they are still called “illegal,” a dangerous word used far too loosely to describe an industry primarily composed of immigrant New Yorkers.
The entire web of street vending rules and regulations has been broken for decades. For example, there are hundreds of individual city blocks closed off to certain types of vendors during specific periods of the day to sell, called “restricted streets,” a patchwork of state statues, city rules and regulations, state and federal case law. Restrictions are different for merchandise vendors, food vendors and First Amendment vendors.
The question here is: Whose fault is it that vendors do not have business licensing? Is it the vendors’ fault? Did the city offer vendors licenses and permits, and then vendors rejected them? No. The vendors, who have done nothing wrong, have been failed by their city.
The mayor has presented vendors with an impossible situation — sending the NYPD, which last year was supposed to be removed from the job of enforcing street vending rules and regulations — to criminalize unlicensed vending, placing high fines on violators, without opening the opportunity for vendors to get a permit or a license. This is how NYC treats its vendors, the smallest businesses in our city, the most vulnerable in our communities, who have been serving our city during the hardest times. When we were all hiding in our homes fearing the pandemic, vendors were serving us and keeping their communities fed.
De Blasio talked about ending “the tale of two cities” in his mayoral campaign in 2013, and for vendors, they feel that they live in a different city now. A city where some folks are supported, offered relief and can thrive, while they can’t even get official permission to make ends meet. The chasm between political rhetoric and personal reality couldn’t be further.
Although trillions of dollars have been allocated for COVID recovery, many undocumented street vendors and other excluded workers didn’t receive a penny. Now, punitive enforcement only adds insult to injury.
If the cap on entrepreneurship was lifted and the whole system was updated in an equitable manner, our organization will be on the frontline educating our communities for better compliance. But in the status quo, we can’t ask vendors to do the impossible.
Criminalizing street vending is nothing but a sign that de Blasio doesn’t support the marginalized communities he claims to care about. If the mayor wants the vendors to comply with the law, make the law possible to comply with. Lift the cap on entrepreneurship and create opportunities for all New Yorkers to recover from the pandemic.
Attia is managing director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center.
