NYC street vendors protest City Hall crackdown, urge lifting caps on licenses

Over 100 street vendors protested outside City Hall on Thursday, decrying recent crackdowns on unlicensed street vendors in Queens and the Bronx.

Vendors, led by the nonprofit Street Vendor Project, railed against the enforcement and called on City Council to lift caps on the city's highly coveted street vendor licenses and permits. They also urged council members to adopt other reforms introduced in December aimed at “decriminalizing” vending and easing the way for street merchants.

Thursday’s protest was the latest effort by the city’s vendors to push officials to revise the city's decades-old vending laws. It comes as police hail more vendors to criminal court, and amid a boom in the number of unauthorized street vendors. That’s as more new migrants turn to vending, often as they await federal work permits that can take months or even years to obtain.

A local law passed three years ago to increase the number of food vending permits has been insufficient, vendors and their advocates say.

“They have left me with nothing but stress and anguish for me and my family as the bills, the rent keep piling up,” protester Floriberto Dias, a food vendor in the Bronx, said in Spanish. “The politicians aren't doing anything for us street vendors.

Diaz said he had accumulated about $6,000 in fines from tickets for food vending without a permit.

Vendors also visited the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection licensing center to demonstrate the difficulty of obtaining a vending license. There are some 5,100 permits currently available for food vendors, with an estimated 20,000 or more people currently on the waitlist. The number of local licenses for merchandise vendors has been capped at 853 since 1979, and the waitlist has long been shuttered.

The NYPD cleared out unlicensed vendors along a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens on Monday — and again the next day, according to the New York Post.

A police department spokesperson said 12 summonses were issued during Monday evening’s vendor sweep, which they said was prompted by “community complaints.” The NYPD’s 115th precinct posted a photo on X of dozens of large plastic bags filled with "confiscated" items from the sweep: “Your feedback matters, and we heard you, Jackson Heights!”

Police have issued a surging number of tickets — sending vendors to criminal court nearly six times as often last year as in 2019 — according to an analysis of ticket data by the local news outlet THE CITY. That's despite a local law passed in 2021 intended to designate another agency as the primary enforcer of vending laws.

Tarik Sheppard, NYPD deputy commissioner public information, said in a statement: “the NYPD maintains its authority to enforce all violations and will assist any agency when conducting operations. Officers use a high level of discretion to resolve issues without the need for enforcement.”

In March 2023, Mayor Eric Adams announced that he would transfer the main responsibility of street vending enforcement to the Department of Sanitation from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

With a new agency in charge of enforcement, the number of civil summons for street vending offenses dipped last year, but vendors in the Bronx saw a 29% uptick in tickets, according to an analysis by THE CITY. Many of the tickets handed out by the Department of Sanitation have been for vending without a license, according to ticketing data.

Protesters singled out Council Member Francisco Moya of Queens, chanting "Moya lies,” in response to remarks he made to Telemundo during Monday’s sweep. He said he and other elected officials and agencies are assembling a task force to address residents’ concerns around vendors, prostitution, and crime on Roosevelt Avenue.

“Here, we have rules,” Moya said in Spanish. “They have to apply to get a license to vend.”

Moya said in a statement that he supports an increase in the number of vending permits, but he’s committed to responding to concerns from local residents. He said he will “not support the unsanitary food sales under open subway staircases, sales of counterfeit goods, or the sale of stolen goods we see on our streets today.”

During Thursday’s protest, vendor Diaz said of Moya, “If he is so affected by our work, why doesn't he tell the public that there is no way to apply for licenses?...Why doesn't he say that they should reform the laws, so that we have an opportunity to work with dignity and with licenses and permits?”