Street vendors plead for help
Rally at City Hall urging pols to ease rules for struggling businesses
They are New York’s smallest businesses, but owners say they have the biggest headaches.
Street vendors from across the five boroughs rallied at City Hall on Thursday to urge lawmakers to overhaul rules and regulations that make it hard for them to make a living.
Already hammered by the coronavirus pandemic, the vendors said they are being done in by an epidemic of enforcement that is seriously hurting their bottom line.
“Street vendors are New York and our city wouldn’t be the same without them,” said Brooklyn Council Member Alexa Avilés, one of several lawmakers who joined the vendors.
“Street vendors are our smallest businesses scraping by to make it in an economy that has left them out, whether due to our broken immigration system or local red tape,” she added. “It is up to us as local elected officials and city stakeholders to find solutions.”
Pablo Hernandez, 44, who has been selling tamales and hot drinks in Jackson Heights, Queens, with his wife for three years, said he is on the waiting list for a license, but that the list is too long.
“We are trying to fight to get a license, a permit for us to work outside and keep on selling our products and trying to survive,” he said. “That’s how we survive. That’s how we get our money for our family.”
The city has a decades-long cap on street vending licenses that makes it all but impossible for a new vendor to break into the business. The NYC Street Vendor Justice Coalition, which organized the rally, called on lawmakers to implement its Street Vendor Reform platform.
Measures include ensuring all vendors can access licenses, repealing criminal liability for them and opening up more locations to vending.
“Today street vending continues to be such a critical part of the fabric of New York City,” said Councilwoman Pierina Sanchez (D-Bronx).
She said she is introducing legislation to increase access to business licensing for vendors in New York City.
“In the 1960s my father sold peanuts without any shoes on in the streets of Santo Domingo,” Sanchez said. “Ten years later when he migrated to New York City, he still continued to be a street vendor here ... And many in our family also turn to food vending to make ends meet, to put food on the table to put a roof over our family’s heads.”
Hernandez accused cops enforcing the city’s vendor laws of being cruel.
“They asked us if we have the permit, and we said, ‘No we don’t have it. We’re on the list,” Hernandez said. “They throw us out, and they throw our stuff out. They just dump it in the trash. Two times they dumped the stuff and three times they just told us to go. What can we do? We can do nothing but go back home and make everything again.”