NYPD officers have hit street vendors in Manhattan and Brooklyn with at least seven criminal summonses for vending since a new law went into effect 10 days ago that’s supposed to eliminate such charges.

The seven summonses reported to the Street Vendor Project appear to be an early indication that the NYPD hasn’t trained officers to abide by the new law. 

NYPD data for the total number of summons issued since the new law took effect on March 9 isn’t yet available. 

“It’s a big culture shift for NYPD,” said Street Vendor Project Co-Director Mohamed Attia, pointing to the 3,662 criminal summonses issued by NYPD officers last year. 

“It should have necessitated widespread education within the department to make sure that officers are aware of the laws that have changed and how that would affect their work — so street vendors, our city’s smallest business owners, do not have to suffer the consequences.”

THE CITY reviewed photos shared by the Street Vendor Project of seven criminal summonses issued to five different vendors in Manhattan and Brooklyn to vendors for failing to display their license, failing to display food prices and being too close to a bus stop, curb or hydrant — all things that should have been civil violations under the new law.

An NYPD spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the department was “continuing to train officers on the change in the law.”

“The new law does not entirely prohibit the issuance of criminal court summonses for unlicensed general vending,” the spokesperson added, saying repeat offenders could also still be subject to criminal summonses, though it was unclear which section of the law the spokesperson was referring to. The NYPD did not return a request for clarification.

Victoria Opperman, a spokesperson for City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who wrote the new law, wasn’t able to immediately confirm that assertion.

The NYPD spokesperson also said they had not been able to locate records of the summonses provided by THE CITY — none of which for unlicensed general vending.

Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, said City Hall would defer comment to the NYPD. Mamdani repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he didn’t think street vending should be a quality-of-life concern for the NYPD.

Under the new law, vendors without licenses can now be charged with a criminal violation, rather than a misdemeanor. 

If a vendor with a license violates what are known as “time, place and manner” restrictions, those are now civil infractions. Advocates have long said that criminal charges can lead to negative legal consequences for vendors, many of whom are immigrants.

“Nothing has changed. Every day they’re writing tickets in the street,” said Adham, a 23-year-old halal food vendor, who spoke in Arabic through a translator and who declined to share his last name, fearing retaliation. 

He was hit with a criminal summons over the weekend for failing to display his vending license and has to appear in Criminal Court at the end of March or face a warrant for his arrest. 

In the months before the new law took effect, Adham said he’d received more than a dozen criminal summonses in addition to a flurry of civil summonses issued by the Department of Sanitation and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which are also tasked with street vendor enforcement. 

“It’s every day, four maybe five [civil summonses],” he said. “Yesterday I got two.”

The decriminalization bill passed the Council last June, only to be vetoed by outgoing Mayor Eric Adams. The Council voted to override his veto last fall. 

Krishnan said NYPD officials told the Council last week they were reviewing training efforts to make sure officers understood the law. 

“We are in touch with NYPD about these summonses, and we will be monitoring compliance closely,” he said. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio had pulled the NYPD out of vendor enforcement in 2020, turning endorsement over to the Health and Sanitation Departments. But Mayor Eric Adams restored the police role, with vendors then facing a surge in criminal summonses, as THE CITY reported. 

Mamdani hasn’t said as mayor whether or not he would pull the police back from enforcing vendor laws, and Raskin didn’t return a request for comment about that.

The new law had been in the works for years, along with a long campaign to lift the tight restrictions on vending licenses. In December, the Council also passed another reform to lift the cap on general merchandise vendors from 853, which had been in place since the 1970s. 

The same law will also add 2,200 new food vending permits annually for the next five years, which will bring the number of legal licenses up to more than 20,000 over the next few years.

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A mariachi band readied for a performance inside Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village Monday evening while street vendors danced to salsa, reggaeton and pop music spun by a DJ. 

Lines formed before tables serving kati rolls, dumplings and spring rolls as vendors fed one another and laughter and conversation filled the room.

“So many people asked if they could bring food that I had to say no to a couple people,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, an organizer with the Street Vendor Project, the non-profit that hosted the party for 250 vendor members and supporters to celebrate a historic victory that would finally allow vendors to ply their trade legally and legitimately.

A little more than a week earlier, the City Council had overridden former Mayor Eric Adams’ end-of-term veto to pass a package of bills that includes 11,000 new food vending permits and 10,500 new merchandise vending permits that will roll out over the next few years. 

With those new permits, the city will finally offer roughly enough licenses to cover the estimated 23,000 vendors who currently work the five boroughs — a goal which vendors and their advocates have fought for years to accomplish.

Thousands of merchandise vendors who had been unable to obtain permits for decades will see the cap of 853 licenses, set in 1979, lifted for the first time. Food vendors, too, will see the largest permit expansion since a cap of 5,100 was instituted in the 1980s. (A 2021 law meant to make additional permits available has yielded only a handful due to implementation delays.)

Rehana Parcin, 39, recalled the moment she and her husband learned of the bill’s passage as she carefully placed chicken and veggie kati rolls onto small bamboo boats for people who’d queued up before her stand Monday evening.

“We were in the cart when we heard the news, and we were so happy that we gave some of our customers free food that day,” Parcin told THE CITY in Bangla via an interpreter with the Street Vendor Project.

For nearly 13 years, Parcin said, she and her husband have been stuck on a waitlist of more than 10,000 people for a food vending permit. They’ve been operating with one they’ve been renting from the underground market for $12,000 a year — a common practice for vendors who struggle to access permits. By comparison, official permits typically cost only about $200 to obtain or renew. 

Parcin, who has been a vendor since immigrating to New York in 2010, said she’s hopeful about finally getting a permit of her own, and plans to spend the money she’d otherwise be using on a rented permit to expand her offerings to include specialties from her native Bangladesh.

“After all these years, we’ll finally be independent, we’ll finally be free, and our cart will finally be self-reliant,” Parcin said.

‘Life’s Gift’

About an hour into the gathering, Semi Lopez, 42, emerged from the crowd with a five-gallon jug of piña colada hoisted over his shoulder. A swarm of people followed, with some volunteering help and others chasing after the cold, delectable drink.

“I’ve always liked supporting the community — I’ve always thought that,” Lopez said in Spanish. “We started just like any other street vendor — from the bottom, without a permit, without anything — so it’s good for us to support each other because I’ve seen the police take everything from vendors.”

Lopez has been a vendor in Sunset Park for 11 years, and got his start selling Mexican jello out of a laundry cart after a robbery left him physically unable to continue his work in construction. He now sells Mexican hot dogs and hamburgers from two food carts, he said, after expanding his business several years ago with two permits he’s been renting from the underground market for roughly $36,000 a year.

The native from the Puebla state of Mexico said he only became a member of the Street Vendor Project a few months ago, after police officers ramped up their crackdown on vendors in the area. But already, he said, he’s touched by the camaraderie and impact of the movement.

As part of the vending reform package, the City Council in September also overrode another Adams’ veto to remove criminal penalties for licensed street vendors. 

“It’s a really big win, and I’m really happy about the new opportunities,” Lopez said. The permit expansion bill passed in a veto override late last month, however, also stiffens rules around license suspension and revocation for vendors who repeatedly violate laws governing where and when they can sell.

Still, with the money he hopes to save from permit rentals, Lopez said, he’ll come closer to his dream of opening a brick-and-mortar place with an even greater variety of Mexican food.

Across the room, Aminata Volta was filling out a form to renew her Street Vendor Project membership. The first line of the membership pledge reads: “I am becoming a member of SVP because I want to help BUILD A MOVEMENT of street vendors fighting for stronger rights and better working conditions.”

Volta immigrated from Burkina Faso in 1987, and sells handmade jewelry and accessories in Harlem. She said she had received a letter just a week earlier informing her of good news she’s been waiting nearly a decade for: “Your number has been reached on the waiting list to apply for a General Vendor license.”

“I almost fainted,” said Volta, 67, who’s been vending since 1989. “I called everybody to tell them about it.”

Among the people Volta called was Fatoumata Camara, a 73-year-old Bronx jewelry vendor from Côte d’Ivoire, who’d entered the waitlist about a decade ago upon Volta’s encouragement. Camara said she is still waiting for her number to be called, but is hopeful that the new permits will speed up the process.

Volta, meanwhile, encouraged her fellow vendors to remain patient as the process plays out — describing the passage of the reform package as “life’s gift.”

“I can’t wait for the other vendors to get their permits,” Volta said. “The joy — I want them to feel the same joy.”

Rosario Troncoso, for one, said she screamed in her apartment when she learned about the Council’s veto override on permit expansions. As president of the Street Vendor Association at Corona Plaza, Troncoso has witnessed an exodus of vendors from the once-vibrant public square in Queens since a high-profile crackdown in the summer of 2023 — with some vendors leaving the trade entirely to pursue other means of income.

But the vendors’ latest legislative victory, she said, could encourage people to return to a market that’s been thinning out over the last two years.

“I’ve heard from several people expressing interest in returning. Now that there will be new permits, they’re sort of asking questions,” Troncoso said in Spanish. “It gives me hope that even people who are not on the waitlist might one day get a license in the future. And for me, the fight does not end here. It will continue until everyone can get a license.”

Unfinished Business

As the celebration began to wind down at around 7:30 p.m., MD Nasir Uddin, 38, began to find his way to the exit. Uddin was among the Islamic goods vendors in Jackson Heights who had been ousted from the neighborhood’s “Bangladesh Street” two years ago, just days before Ramadan.

Since then, Uddin said, he has had his setup raided and merchandise confiscated several more times. Still, he has no choice but to operate without a permit after losing his job at a grocery store in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. By that time, the waitlist for a merchandise permit had already been closed for four years.

Uddin described the historic expansion of merchandise permits as a “long-standing dream come true.”

“But how are we going to make sure that the many vendors who’ve been working so hard and been getting so many tickets over the years — who’ve been facing all sorts of challenges — will be prioritized for the new permits?” he asked in Bangla. 

But in Judson on Monday night he celebrated, while reminiscing about the day when a Street Vendor Project organizer called to share the news about the new licenses.

“My family was very, very happy and they were like, ‘Maybe by the end of Ramadan, by Eid, we’re going to be celebrating your new permit,’” Uddin recalled. “But I had to tell them, ‘No, no, no, it’s going to take a bit more time to apply, to get it, and we don’t know what the exact procedure might look like.’”

“Then my family was like, ‘Wait, so you might not get it?’” He said, chuckling. “And they were upset again.”

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The City Council on Thursday voted to approve a torrent of bills related to criminal justice, housing construction, labor and even a resolution honoring the New York Knicks in an end-of-year push before the turnover of power at City Hall and the Council itself.

Lawmakers weighed more than 50 bills and over a dozen resolutions on Thursday night during the final stated Council meeting for outgoing Speaker Adrienne Adams of Queens, whose term expires at the end of the year. She is expected to be replaced by Council member Julie Menin, a Democrat from the Upper East Side, who last month said she had enough support from her colleagues to be elected the chamber’s next leader.

Among the passed legislation are bills that increase the prevailing wage for construction workers on some affordable housing projects to a minimum $40 hourly; a duo of bills that establish “just cause” protections for for-hire drivers and food delivery workers; and a package of bills that expand services and the number of licenses for street vendors. 

Lawmakers also approved a trio of bills, reviled by real estate groups, that seek to regulate the building of affordable housing. 

Ahead of the meeting, Speaker Adams spoke about her legacy as the first Black woman to lead the chamber and her tenure as speaker advancing affordable housing, equality and workers’ rights. 

“Our historic representation fully represented the breadth of New Yorker’s experience, allowing us to lead differently than our predecessors,” said Adams.

“Our city is only as strong as our people, and I am so proud of how we prioritized New Yorkers over the last four years when chaos in this building was all too present,” she said, in an apparent rebuke of the mayor. “As public servants it is our responsibility to improve the conditions of our communities, ensuring that all of us can lead safe, healthy and dignified lives.”

Lawmakers continued to amend the agenda and discuss their bills well into Thursday afternoon – delaying the votes by several hours past the 1:30 p.m. scheduled start time. Council majority leader Amanda Farías (D-The Bronx) announced the final vote tallies shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday. 

A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams slammed the housing measures approved by the Council on Thursday as “irresponsible actions” that will “add red tape, drive up rents, and deplete critical city resources” and will also “sandbag the incoming mayor and speaker.”  

“Fortunately, Mayor Adams is in office until December 31 and we will be reviewing our next steps regarding the bills passed today,” added the spokesperson, Fabien Levy. 

The mayor has until the end of his term on Dec. 31 to veto any bill he chooses. Any measure not vetoed will become law at the end of the year, even if the mayor does not sign them.

The mayor flew to Mexico this week on what his staff has described as a non-taxpayer-funded trip; he has not said when he will return to New York.

Wage Boosts and Job Protections

The Council overwhelmingly approved highly sought-after wage boosts and job protections for workers in a variety of industries, from construction and building services to gig workers.

In a victory for unions and community groups, developers of some city-funded affordable housing projects will be required to hire workers locally and to pay a minimum combined wage and benefits package of at least $40 an hour after lawmakers approved the wage boost by a veto-proof majority. In a rally ahead of the vote, lawmakers and union leaders from LiUNA Laborers Local 79 said that it was a long road to approve the bill, known as the Construction Justice Act, noting that it was roughly seven years in the making.

Gig-work giants, including Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub, will be prohibited from locking workers out of their accounts unless for just cause or “bona fide economic reasons,” after lawmakers approved a pair of bills introduced by Council members Shekar Krishnan of Queens and Justin Brannan of Brooklyn that seek to protect for-hire vehicle drivers and delivery workers from that they describe as unjust firings.

Krishnan, who introduced the driver bill last year, rallied with members of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance outside of City Hall ahead of Thursday’s vote. Also on the for-hire vehicle driver front, lawmakers approved a separate bill that allows drivers to park in unused commercial metered spaces for bathroom and other work breaks.

Building security guards won wage increases, benefits and paid time off standards under a bill championed by the union 32BJ SEIU that is named after fallen member Aland Etienne, the security officer who died in the line of duty at the mass shooting at 345 Park Avenue in July. A veto-proof majority of lawmakers voted to approve the reforms Thursday.

Street Vendors Win Long-Fought Reforms

The Council approved the first expansion since the 1970s of permits for merchandise vendors, which are currently limited to 853 and have years-long waiting lists, adding 10,500 new licenses in 2027. The same measure adds 2,200 new food vending permits annually for the next five years.

In all, the vending system will see 21,500 more new permits — which along with existing permits add up to a systemwide total of 29,413. The Immigration Research Initiative estimates that about 23,000 vendors currently operate in the city, most without a permit.

The bill initially would have eventually lifted the permit cap entirely, and vendors and their advocates have pushed the bill for more than two years, making concessions to address brick-and-mortar retailers’ concerns. 

The new law comes with new rules that would suspend or revoke licenses for repeat violators of rules that require vendors to keep sidewalks clean and clear of obstructions. 

“We’re here with a bill that is stronger, clearer and more balanced than where we began,” said the bill’s lead sponsor, Council member Pierina Sanchez (D-The Bronx).

Affordable Housing Restrictions

Over the objections of the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and a host of affordable housing advocates, the Council approved three bills that add guidelines for new affordable housing development. 

One bill dictates a minimum proportion of two- and three-bedroom apartments within new developments. Another, aimed at subsidized buildings, says half of apartments must be targeted for extremely and very low-income households. And a third bill requires HPD to set aside at least 4% of new city-subsidized apartments to be for homeownership, not rentals, over five years.

Bill sponsors said they were filling a need for struggling New Yorkers seeking housing and addressing gaps in affordable housing portfolios, but those who opposed argued that the measures imposed high costs and a lack of flexibility that would actually stymie housing production.

Handing the Mayor Adams administration a win, the Council also passed a bill mandating landlords to provide cooling equipment in the bedrooms of tenants, such that the air temperature stays no hotter than 78 degrees. This would create a cooling season — similar to the winter’s heating season — between June 15 and Sept. 15.

The legislation would take effect in June 2030, and tenants would have to opt in to get a cooling option, such as an air conditioner, starting in March 2028. The Adams administration made setting a maximum air temperature a goal as part of the 2023 edition of PlaNYC, the city’s sustainability agenda.

Police Oversight

The Council approved a bill granting the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which independently investigates alleged NYPD misconduct, direct access to footage from officers’ body-worn cameras. The legislation is meant to speed the timeline for evidence. A report by Comptroller Brad Lander found the CCRB faces lengthy timelines and constraints on obtaining documents and body-camera footage. The Police Benevolent Association staunchly opposed the bill, saying it would drive cops to quit.

Additional reporting by Katie Honan.

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In the wake of the military-style federal raid targeting vendors on Canal Street last week, street vendors and their advocates are again mounting a push for the City Council to lift the cap on vendor permits once and for all. 

Dozens of sellers with the Street Vendor Project rallied outside City Hall Wednesday calling for a slate of reform bills, one of which would lift the decades-old cap on general merchandise permits that has been stuck at just 853 licenses since 1979. 

“With a license, we could work in peace and tranquility,” said Fernando Alvarez, 38, in Spanish, a vendor who’s sold seasonal accessories like hats and gloves for the past decade around Corona Plaza in Queens since he immigrated from Ecuador. He joined the marchers Wednesday. 

“Yes, there’s the same risk with immigration, but a change in local enforcement, he said, would mean it would make it “a little more sure that you can work in peace. We don’t have to be always running with the fear that they’re going to take away our things and give us tickets.”

In the wake of the Canal Street raid in which masked federal agents targeting West African street vendors arrested nine people, including at least five vendors according to the Street Vendor Project. The group slammed Mayor Eric Adams for his administration’s slow implementation of earlier reforms in a statement after the raid, noting that had been coupled with increased NYPD enforcement which has increasingly funneled vendors into the criminal court system.

“Our city government has failed for decades to regulate the street vending system, to make sure that we have licenses, permits, pathways to compliance,” said Mohamed Attia, the Street Vendor Project’s managing director. 

“And what is the result? Street vendors have received criminal tickets. They are getting arrested. They were sent to jail, and now the feds are coming at them and sadly we can only expect more of these attacks on our communities.”

The four bills vendors are pushing would lift caps on food and merchandise licenses, create a Division of Street Vendor Assistance, and allow vendors to sell further away from curbs and street traffic for safety.

The bills add to recent changes enacted by the Council, after overriding Mayor Adams’ veto in September, that reduced criminal consequences for street vendors. Unlicensed vendors can still receive criminal summonses, but once the new law takes effect in March they will no longer face misdemeanor charges.

Asked about the latest reform effort, Julia Agos, a spokesperson for the City Council, pointed to the bills passed this fall. 

“While local law cannot prevent the irresponsible actions by ICE, like we saw last week on Canal Street, the additional street vending bills continue to go through the legislative process that is deliberative and allows for thorough public input,” she said. 

Orchida Harizaj, a spokesperson for Mayor Adams, said the mayor “has always stood steadfast with the small business owners, delivery workers, and street vendors that help New York City thrive,” but added the administration is “committed to addressing illegal vending in order to keep neighborhoods clean and safe.” 

“The mayor has been clear that the City Council must address the vending license process through the legislative process,” she said. “We look forward to partnering with the City Council to continue to improve quality-of-life issues and support working-class New Yorkers.”

For decades, advocates have attempted to push for the city to lift the street vending cap and for reforms to the city’s byzantine permitting system. While a 2021 law lifted the cap on food vending permits, and 1,107 new food vending licenses have been issued since then, according to Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Spokesperson Shari Logan. 

In the meantime, the Adams administration has ramped up criminal enforcement for street vending. The NYPD has issued 918 criminal tickets for vending through July 15 this year, up 16% from the 792 over the same time last year, THE CITY previously reported.

After the Canal Street raid, rumours spread among local activists and vendors of possible raids targeting additional street vendors in Queens, though those haven’t yet come to pass. Rosario Troncoso, a food vendor who usually sells Mexican fare in Queens, said she spent the weekend indoors terrified she’d be arrested by federal agents.

“I didn’t go out to work, I had friends who did, but they were taking a huge risk,” she said in Spanish. “Yes there’s a lot of fear. But, we have to keep fighting and not show our fear, because we have to eat, we have to pay rent.”

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The City Council on Wednesday voted to approve four bills aimed at strengthening on-the-job protections for street vendors and app-based grocery delivery workers — overriding vetoes by Mayor Eric Adams of three of those bills while passing a new one. 

A supermajority of Council members first approved three of the bills in votes in July and August before they were later struck down by the mayor, triggering a bitter showdown between City Hall and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. 

Those three bills are: Intro 47, which eliminates all criminal penalties for licensed street vendors and misdemeanor penalties for unlicensed sellers; and Intros 1133 and 1135, which require app-based grocery delivery companies such as Instacart to abide by the same minimum wage requirements as restaurant takeout delivery platforms. All three will go into effect next March.

The bill passed for the first time Wednesday, Intro 20, requires food delivery apps to provide workers with safety equipment and ensure they complete street safety training. As THE CITY reported, that measure had stalled for more than 18 months as leading delivery platforms spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote the political campaigns of Council leaders, including Speaker Adams.

In a rally with vendors, delivery workers, advocates and fellow elected officials Wednesday morning hours before the vote, Speaker Adams said the mayor’s vetoes “demonstrate that he prioritizes taking action to fuel greater corporate profits at the expense of workers in our city who continue to be exploited.”

She continued: “I don’t know about you, but I don’t know why we’re here today, about to enact an override on legislation that was worked on collaboratively with this mayoral administration. The mayor discarded the work of his own staff, and inexplicably vetoed them.”

The mayor vetoed the Instacart bills last month, saying in a statement at the time that it was “not the right time” to pass the new wage requirements, warning the legislation risked raising grocery prices at a time of growing inflation — echoes of arguments also made by industry groups who opposed the bill, including one backed by Instacart.

He also vetoed the vendor decriminalization bill at the eleventh-hour in July, arguing that easing up on vendors would be “unfair to law-abiding business owners and poses real public health and safety risks.”

This is not the first confrontation between the Council and the Adams administration. Mayor Adams, a moderate democrat, has sought to overturn bills approved by the left-leaning City Council on a range of issues several times during his term, most notably with his Jan. 2024 veto of a bill banning solitary confinement in the city’s jails; two weeks later, the Council voted overwhelmingly to override that veto, too. 

More Protections

Ahead of the Council vote on Wednesday afternoon, City Hall spokesperson Zachary Nosanchuk doubled down on the mayor’s veto for the delivery worker bills.

“While Mayor Adams does not take the power of a veto lightly, we stand by our decision to support our most vulnerable residents who rely on grocery delivery, including seniors, people with disabilities, and those who receive SNAP and EBT benefits,” said Nosanchuk. 

Intros 1133 and 1135, introduced by Council members Jennifer Gutiérrez and Sandy Nurse, seek to apply the same wages and protections afforded to food delivery workers to workers delivering groceries.

Nurse’s bill gives grocery delivery workers the same hourly pay guarantee as workers toiling for platforms such as DoorDash or Grubhub, currently $21.44 hourly before tips. Gutiérrez’s bill amends existing pay transparency rules and bathroom access requirements to include “all contracted delivery workers retained to deliver goods for a delivery service.”

“It’s very very clear what side we’re on and what side the mayor is on,” Nurse said at the rally Wednesday morning. “We are here with the people, we are here with the workers who deliver every day for this city, and he’s with the billionaires and the millionaires standing in the way of you all who are just trying to make a living.”

David Limas, a 41-year-old Instacart delivery worker from Mexico, said the new laws meant “stability, dignity and safety” for the tens of thousands of workers like himself.

“There are days when after spending the whole day delivering food to others, that I don’t even have enough to feed myself,” Limas said in Spanish at the rally Wednesday morning, his right hand still clutching his bike helmet. “Every day we risk our lives in traffic, in the cold, in the heat, carrying heavy bags and climbing stairs. And after all that, the apps can still punish us with deactivations, taking away our work from their apps from one day to the next.”

Meanwhile, with its 39-7 vote to approve Intro 20, sponsored by Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), the Council advanced a measure Uber and DoorDash had long lobbied to obstruct. It requires platforms to provide safety equipment and training to employees while requiring delivery workers to be clearly identifiable as working for the platforms — the same rules that have applied for years to local businesses that hire their own delivery workers.

Brewer said she was “more than happy” with the final version of the bill, which Brewer refused to back down from during negotiations even as the companies claimed the bill was unfair and extreme. Companies found to have repeatedly violated the requirements could have their operating licenses suspended.

Brewer secured the vote after adjusting the bill to ensure that worker data cannot be used for law enforcement purposes, at the urging on immigration and worker safety advocates.

Vendor Bill Support Wanes

On the vendor decriminalization front, the 35 votes the bill received to narrowly override the mayor’s veto with four members absent Wednesday afternoon is less than the 40 it had already originally tallied on June 30 —  with some members who had initially supported the bill reversing their initial votes to either deny or abstain in the veto override.

At least two Council members  — Joann Ariola (R-Queens) and Susan Zhuang (D-Brooklyn) — also flipped to support the override.

“This administration has used [the veto power] more to score political points in an election year than to help the people who live and work in this city,” Ariola said, explaining her vote. “Time and time he has the opportunity to fight for the hard-working people of this city who are trying to eke out a living every single day, but he has chosen to side with the big-money interests and donors … I believe that the power of the veto is important, but I also believe that it must be used responsibly and should be called out harshly when it isn’t.”

In a conversation with THE CITY Tuesday prior to the vote, Councilmember Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens), who introduced the bill, said some of his colleagues in the Council have moved to back the bill as a way to reject the “mayor’s continued destruction of the laws that we pass.”

The legislation, Krishnan added, was borne out of a set of unanimous recommendations from a Street Vendor Advisory Board that includes real estate and business representatives as well as the NYPD — which Adams had said in 2022 that he “will begin to implement.”

The passage of the law comes as the number of criminal tickets against vendors has skyrocketed, and continues to climb under the Adams administration. The NYPD issued 918 criminal tickets for vending through July 15 this year, up 16% from the 792 over the same time last year, according to an analysis of the latest NYPD summons data available through mid-July by THE CITY.

Those criminal charges can negatively impact immigration proceedings. Of the roughly 23,000 street vendors across the five boroughs, 96% are born outside of the U.S, estimates a 2024 survey.

First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, in a statement ahead of the veto override, criticized the Council for the move, contending that it is an “an economic justice issue that violates the rights of every small business and licensed vendor whose very existence is jeopardized and undermined by illegal vending.”

“What the Council is doing here is an affront to all those legal businesses, most of them owned and operated by immigrants,” Mastro said. “That’s why Mayor Adams vetoed this bill, which strips law enforcement officers of the authority to address illegal street vending, even in the most egregious and unhealthy cases.”

The new law does allow officers to continue to dole out criminal tickets for unlicensed vending — a category that has accounted for 85% of the criminal vending summonses issued through July 15 this year. Officers can also continue to hand out civil tickets, which can cost up to up  $1,000.

Ah Long Yan, a Chinese vendor from Flushing, noted at the rally that he’s observed how enforcement in the area has intensified since mayor Adams started campaigning for reelection in the neighborhood about two months ago.

“He noticed how it’s affected his campaign, and since then they’ve been clamping down on us,” Yan said in Mandarin outside City Hall, hinting at how the mayor has been catering to business interests. “It’s like this park where we’re standing by: The businesses are like the large trees, and us vendors are just like the grass underneath. You tell me, would the park look good if you only let the trees grow without the grass?”

A father of three teenagers, Yan told THE CITY after the rally Wednesday that he’s lost count of the number of civil tickets he’s received, and has received a criminal ticket upwards of $500 for vending accessories and knick knacks without a license on Main Street.

Reforms that increase the issuance of food-selling licenses in 2021 do not apply to merchandise vendors. Yan said he hasn’t had any success with obtaining a merchandise permit, which has been capped at 853 since 1979 with more than 11,000 people currently on a waitlist to acquire one, according to the city’s latest tally in 2023. And with an income of about $100 on a good day, Yan said, he can’t afford to rent a permit off the market for nearly $200 a day.

Speaking on the fact that unlicensed vendors can still receive criminal tickets after today’s veto override, Yan said: “It’s not fair. Do you think it’s fair? We’re not out here committing crimes.”

Krishnan emphasized that the law passed on Wednesday is just one part of a larger vending reform package — while a bill by Councilmember Pierina Sanchez (D-The Bronx) to eventually lift the cap on vendor permitting is still pending before the Council.

As the rally dispersed, a vendor who’s been selling hats, sweaters and keychains outside a CVS just down the block from City Hall all morning was now surrounded by five police officers.

“They’re trying to issue a ticket to me,” said the vendor, who did not give his name but said he’s been selling in the area since before the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. He started packing up his merchandise as the officers watched: “I’m a little nervous now.”

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Mayor Eric Adams on late Wednesday night vetoed a City Council bill that would have eliminated all criminal enforcement for licensed street vendors as well as misdemeanor penalties for unlicensed sellers — just hours before his deadline to do so.

“Since day one, our administration has been committed not just to making New Yorkers safe, but to making them feel safe, too — and that includes addressing persistent quality-of-life issues like illegal street vending,” Adams said. “We cannot be so idealistic that we’re not realistic — preventing the brave men and women of the NYPD from intervening, even in the most egregious cases, is unfair to law-abiding business owners and poses real public health and safety risks.”

The bill, introduced by Councilmember Shekar Krishnan (D-Queens), passed on June 30 with a 40-member majority — enough to override a veto. It came as the number of criminal tickets related to street vending has skyrocketed under the Adams administration. Vendors, however, could continue to receive civil tickets for time-place-manner violations under the bill.

Vendors have previously told THE CITY they received criminal tickets for violations such as failing to display their permit while still setting up shop, operating within 15 feet of a fire hydrant, or selling in prohibited commercial zones.

Those criminal charges can negatively impact immigration proceedings for street vendors, 96% of whom are born outside of the U.S, according to a 2024 survey.

Meanwhile, immigration arrests have skyrocketed across the five boroughs as Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire 10,000 new agents unlocked by new federal funding.

“In the dead of night, Mayor Adams did Donald Trump’s bidding by vetoing my legislation that protects our immigrant small business owners, who are simply trying to provide for their families, from jail time and immigration consequences,” Krishnan said.

The NYC Street Vendor Justice Coalition added in a statement: “At a time when the Trump administration has increased fear for immigrants within our communities, it is unconscionable that Mayor Adams has chosen to veto Intro 47.”

The Council will have until the end of August to take a vote to override Adams’ veto.

“Mayor Adams’ veto is yet another example of him supporting Trump’s agenda over New Yorkers,” said Council spokesperson Julia Agos. “The Council will consider its next steps to protect our city from a mayor willing to put his own political needs over people and sound policy that keeps us all safe, with access to opportunity.”

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Waleed Salama spent two years studying vending regulations before setting up his own Halal cart along Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in 2002, where he travels from his home in Coney Island six days a week to work. But the 59-year-old said his preparations have rarely helped him fend off tickets, especially in the last two years as enforcement has intensified.

“The police will come every day and write a ticket. They might even come and write you two or three tickets on the same day,” said Salama, who holds a vending permit and moved to the city from Egypt in 2000. “They’ll write tickets about anything — they’ll find a thing to write a ticket for. And when I ask them, ‘Why are you here? Why are you bothering me?’ The police will say, ‘You know my boss sent me, you know it’s not up to me.’”

Salama’s experience is emblematic of many street vendors in New York City, as most vending tickets are issued in predominantly white and wealthy areas to immigrant and minority sellers living in much poorer outerborough neighborhoods, according to a new report by the Worker Institute at Cornell University.

Just over half of all civil tickets issued for street vending in 2024 were handed to sellers living in neighborhoods with the highest poverty rates in the city, the analysis of multiple agencies’ summons data shows.

The four areas with the most criminal vending summonses were all in Midtown, from 25th to 60th streets and Fifth Avenue westward, as were two of the top five ZIP codes where the most civil tickets were issued. All of these Midtown ZIP codes represent areas with fewer nonwhite residents than the city average, according to census data cited in the report.

By contrast, the top five ZIP codes representing the home addresses of vendors who received civil tickets were in Astoria, Corona and Elmhurst in Queens and Sunset Park in Brooklyn — three of which represent more nonwhite and immigrant residents, as well as higher poverty rates, than the city average. (NYPD public data for criminal tickets does not list residential addresses for vendors.) 

This, the report charges, “paints the picture of an expensive program to criminalize immigrant and minority populations primarily for operating in predominantly white spaces.”

The study comes as the number of street vending tickets continues to surge amid a series of much trumpeted crackdowns by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, including Operation Restore Roosevelt in Corona.

Overall, according to City Limits, the NYPD and the Department of Sanitation issued 13,520 vending-related tickets last year — more than double the 5,748 they had handed out in 2023. DSNY became the primary agency in charge of vendor enforcement in April of that year, though the police department has remained heavily involved in ticketing along with the parks and health departments.

“No other industry is so exposed to government oversight. The result is a nearly impossible web of regulations and bureaucracy for this primarily low-income immigrant workforce to navigate,” the authors of the Cornell report wrote. “The complicated web of enforcement across agencies means a lot of time, money, and resources are spent on street vending enforcement.”

The report also calls the sanitation department’s enforcement effort “costly and ineffective.” 

DSNY last year imposed about $200,000 in vending-related fines but collected just $91,000 of it while spending $2 million on street-seller enforcement, the report noted. That’s roughly an average of $21 dollars lost for every one of the 1,502 vending tickets the department issued.

While the parks, health and police departments also issue vending tickets, no other agency provided specific expenditure data for those efforts.

DSNY press secretary Vincent Gragnani said raising money isn’t the department’s goal for enforcement.

“We have said many times we do not enforce for potential revenue,” Gragnani said. “Enforcement is a tool to ensure people comply with existing laws. We would be thrilled if everyone obeyed the law and we did not have to issue any fines.”

Advocates, however, argue that legislators and agencies should turn to reform efforts that they say would not only create revenue for the city but also expand opportunities for street vendors. 

Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director for the advocacy group Street Vendor Project, cited a report from the city’s Independent Budget Office last year that found a bill to eventually lift the caps on vending permits would generate $17 million in net revenue for the city.

“If the city is losing money on a policy that also pushes New Yorkers further into poverty and destabilizes them, when they’re also now presented with an opportunity to actually create jobs and formalize a system, that to me seems like a very clear choice on creating a policy that’s both beneficial to the city’s coffers but also supports our city’s smallest businesses,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said.

The City Council, where many members have pushed to reform the vending system rather than increase enforcement, notably proposed allocating $7.7 million in its preliminary budget response for the coming fiscal year “to expand and formalize a permanent Vendor Enforcement Unit” at sanitation. The department’s unit included 35 officers, four lieutenants and one inspector as of November 2024.

Council spokesperson Julia Agos told THE CITY its funding proposal “seeks to ensure adequate staffing needed to thoughtfully and equitably approach” street vending issues.

“Street vending is a vibrant part of our city’s culture and economy, and it must operate in a safe and fair manner,” Agos said. “Effective enforcement should not mean overly relying on fines or engaging in the destruction of property, but rather ensuring compliance in a way that both supports the quality of life for all New Yorkers and the ability of New Yorkers to make a living.”

‘What’s the Point of It?’

While most vending tickets last year were issued for unlicensed vending, “quality-of-life” infractions such as improper setups were also frequently penalized, the report noted. 

Vendors, however, say those rules are arbitrarily enforced — another sign of ineffective enforcement that perpetuates harm towards sellers through what the report calls “myriad and often confusing regulations.”

Salama, for one, said he once received an NYPD criminal ticket for failing to display his vending license while he was still setting up shop for the day. Another time, he was hit with a criminal summons for operating from within 15 feet of a fire hydrant — a rule which only applies to merchandise vendors, as city laws governing food vendors only require that their carts not touch or lean against hydrants.

“Oftentimes when I go to Criminal Court, the tickets will actually get dismissed, because it’s usually written incorrectly by the police,” Salama said. “But it’s a problem because with Criminal Court, I have to physically attend to myself, which means I lose the day of work.” 

These days, he added, ticketing and time lost to attending court can eat up about 30% of his vending income.

Birane Ndiaye, another Midtown seller, thought his troubles with vendor enforcement would slow down when he received a merchandise vending license in 2015 to sell accessories like hats and sunglasses after spending 21 years on the waitlist. (The city has for decades capped those licenses at 853 for non-veteran sellers, leaving more than 11,900 people on a waitlist.)

But enforcement from the sanitation department has ramped up especially since the beginning of this year, Ndiaye observed. He’s always been careful to avoid areas where vending is prohibited, he added, but has nonetheless received two tickets so far this year for violating those rules while selling outside of the restricted areas as indicated in a booklet he received from the city when he obtained his license.

“Most of the time they don’t even pay attention to where I’m vending. Wherever I go, they will come,” said Ndiaye, who moved to the city from Senegal in 1988. “Everyday I wake up, I just put in my mind that I’m going to get a ticket.”

While those two tickets have cost Ndiaye just $25 a piece so far, the 61-year-old said it cost him $250 — equivalent to two days worth of income on a good week — to reclaim confiscated goods from the sanitation department, and another $100 to rent a vehicle to transport those items back to storage.

“I’ve had difficulties paying my rent because I’ve had to use the money I was saving up for it to get my stuff back,” said Ndiaye, who pays $620 a month to share a rental apartment in Harlem. “If the city is going to give us a license but then not allow us to sell where we can make money, what’s the point of it? Does the city want vendors to be homeless?”

Gragnani, the sanitation spokesperson, said the department “did not create street vending laws nor set the fines” but rather is there to “enforce existing laws.” He also added that the department receives many enforcement requests from elected officials, community boards, business improvement districts and 311 service requests.

“These requests and our enforcement work are rooted in the belief that all New Yorkers, across every neighborhood, in every borough, deserve clean, safe sidewalks,” he added. 

Fruit vendor Johirul Islam, for his part, said he recently received a $250 ticket from DSNY for a napkin on the ground he said wasn’t even from his business. He was also fined $25 two months ago for adding an extra layer of protection on top of an umbrella that covers his cart.

“They issue you tickets no matter what, even if it’s not in any law that we know of,” said Islam, who commutes from Ozone Park at least five days a week to set up shop on the Upper West Side, where he’s been working for the past 25 years. “We always joke among ourselves that sanitation police are not happy until they issue tickets.”

One of his neighboring fruit vendors, he said, recently closed up shop after receiving a summons, while another is planning to do the same.

“I’d drive by and I wouldn’t see them anymore,” said Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh who is contemplating whether he should forgo vending altogether and try to make a living as a yellow cab driver instead.

“I feel bad that my friends are all moving away, because it could be me anytime.”

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Samy’s garage in Manhattan is usually empty in the afternoon, while the 30 food carts that park there are on city streets offering halal food, hot dogs, peanuts and Icees.

But that changed the week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Most of the carts remain inside now as owners and workers, the vast majority of them undocumented, sacrifice their incomes rather than risk potential run-ins with law enforcement that could drag them into deportation proceedings. 

“Some vendors we work with are in their homes behind locked doors now, too scared to leave,” said Samy, the 34-year-old garage owner and second-generation New York City vendor. The immigrant from Egypt is an American citizen, but asked to be identified only by his first name out of fears that his business would be targeted for immigration enforcement.

“We can’t just keep the door open like before anymore. We always keep the gate closed and installed cameras to check on who’s knocking,” he continued. “Everybody is expecting a raid at any moment now, and it’s terrifying for most of us.”

Trump last week deputized thousands of additional federal law enforcement officers to carry out his deportation agenda as part of a wave of executive actions and orders to remove immigrants who he’s said have made the United States “like a garbage can for the world.” Many migrant parents have said they’re keeping their kids out of city schools as the new administration removed long-standing guidance generally barring enforcement agents from “sensitive locations.”

The Trump Administration has said it’s targeting violent criminals, with Mayor Eric Adams stressing his support for those efforts. 

NBC News, however, citing a “senior Trump official,” reported  that just 52% of the 1,179 the people arrested by ICE on Sunday were considered “criminal arrests,” while the rest were offenders or people whose only criminal offense was crossing the border. That compares to 72% of ICE arrests last year under the Biden administration where the person had a criminal record.

In this tense climate, street vendors who spoke with THE CITY say they worry that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will target vending hot spots for deportation sweeps. 

Policing of the city’s vendors was already on the rise before Eric Adams’ post-election embrace of Trump, who has openly flirted with the idea of pardoning the mayor facing a corruption trial beginning in April. The NYPD issued 1,504 criminal summonses to street vendors between January and September 2024 — surpassing the 1,244 it gave out in all of 2023, according to the latest department data. 

The NYPD did not respond to THE CITY’s questions about why criminal ticketing has increased. A spokesperson stated that, pursuant to city and state sanctuary laws, members of the department “are not permitted to engage in civil immigration enforcement, assist in any manner with civil immigration enforcement, or allow any Department resources to be used in connection with civil immigration enforcement.”

“At the same time,” the spokesperson continued, “members of service will not take any action that will interfere with or impede civil immigration enforcement undertaken by federal authorities.”

Ninety-six percent of New York City’s estimated 23,000 vendors were born outside of the United States, according to a recent survey, where  57% of food vendors said they were either undocumented (27%) or preferred not to answer (30%). 

While Adams last week told immigrants that “it’s imperative that you go to school, use the hospital services, use the police services,” he’s also supported a proposal to repeal parts of to New York’s sanctuary city protections barring most cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, warned that migrant arrivals could “destroy New York City” and refused to publicly criticize Trump. 

Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the nonprofit Street Vendor Project, called on the City Council to pass new laws to protect vendors, including one to repeal criminal liability for street vending and another to lift the city’s cap on vending licenses.

“So many city leaders are saying ‘Trump is doing this, and Trump is doing that, how awful,’ but take a look at the mirror and see what the policies that exist in the city right now are allowing,” she said — just hours after escorting a street vendor with a deportation order to criminal court for an unlicensed vending ticket.

That vendor’s ticket was dismissed, Kaufman-Gutierrez said, but Yasmine Farhang, director of advocacy for the non-profit legal aid organization Immigrant Defense Project, said that “any arrest or ticket, even where a case is dismissed, can be used as a negative factor resulting in deportation,” or otherwise impact other immigration proceedings such as asylum claims.

’Very Scared’

“Oh my god, you know, I am very scared,” said Lola, a 45-year-old street vendor who sells seasonal accessories on Junction Boulevard in Corona, Queens. 

The Cuenca, Ecuador, native, who asked to be identified only by her first name, came to New York with her children four years ago and is now facing a deportation proceeding she says is the result of missing immigration paperwork.

Her weekly income plunged to about $150 from $600 because she no longer works seven days a week to try to avoid getting a criminal ticket, like those many of her colleagues have received, in Adams’ “Operation Restore Roosevelt” enforcement campaign.

“I don’t receive any public assistance,” said Lola, whose husband makes around $900 a week as a construction worker. “I don’t come here to be a public nuisance.” 

But with the fear that any encounter with law enforcement could accelerate her deportation, “I’m really concerned because I heard what usually happens with underage children is that they’re either given away or they’re separated from their families.”

Across the East River in Times Square, Abdul, an undocumented migrant from Egypt, works as a cook on a licensed Halal truck. Since the presidential election, he said, he’s received five criminal tickets from the police — once because he was not visibly wearing his permit around his neck at the start of the shift, and another time for failing to wear gloves during a break.

“The more criminal tickets I get, the more I have to go to criminal court, and the more I’m worried they’re gonna catch me,” he said in Arabic through an interpreter from the Street Vendor Project. “I have a family I live with here, I can’t afford to take that risk and be deported.”

Abdul, the sole breadwinner for his family, used to work as an accountant at a government agency in Egypt, he said, but moved to New York with his wife, four children and mother about five years ago hoping for a freer and more dignified life.

“Sometimes I regret coming here without knowing what it really would be like,” Abdul said as he talked about the two-bedroom basement apartment his family shares. 

“My wife and my family would get really upset, because I always talked to them about the American Dream and how this is a country of immigrants and how everyone has rights and protections — but they would just keep pushing back, and they’d say that it looks like it’s not the case anymore.”

‘Even My Bodega Guy Is Nervous’

Samy, for his part, is concerned that his own family’s American Dream may be slowly slipping away before his eyes.

He was 10 when his family came to New York from Egypt in 2000, overstaying their tourist visas, he recalled. His father started working as a food vendor, and Samy followed suit when he was 18, first with a hot dog cart and later with halal food. He married at 24, and later became a U.S. citizen. 

His family constructed their Manhattan garage themselves in 2017, after finally saving up enough money. They did much of the construction work themselves, side by side with workers who were themselves immigrants from Egypt and Mexico, “folks who look like me and my family,” he recalled. 

There are no food trucks in the garage; it’s only large enough to house carts. With his vendors staying home now, Samy said, his income is down 80%.

“If things keep going at this rate for a couple of months and things don’t get better I might be forced to shut down and go out of business,” Samy said. “I’m gonna lose my business, my housing, and then we get in line for public assistance and shelter. I would be very desperate and all my family’s business that we’ve built for decades of hard work will vanish.”

Vending in New York City, he said, has never been as difficult and hostile in his memory than it is now.

“I got assaulted multiple times while I was working in the streets, faced violence before, but I’ve never been scared like this,” Samy said. “This level of fear and worry is something else. “The fear of losing everything is really something I’ve never thought I’d ever experience in this country.”

He’s far from the only one with that fear though, he said, as many vendors he knows worry that any minor infractions would put them at risk of deportation, or otherwise impact their asylum cases. 

“I’m worried about everybody around me: relatives, friends, co-workers, my community and neighbors,” he said. “Even my bodega guy is nervous. Folks who I work with are nervous and stressed out about the future.” 

Looking to that future, Samy asked: “if they target all immigrants, and snatch away immigrants and workers from everywhere, how this economy will survive? How businesses will stay open? How families will be supported and provided for?”

He answered his own question: “The whole economy of this city will be paralyzed. There’s no way there’s any logic in this!”

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In 2008, the city health department opened up 1,000 permits for street vendors to sell fresh fruits and vegetables in New York City’s food deserts. 

But just 149 vendors held those Green Carts permits as of the end of May, while 1,445 others remained on a waitlist for a chance to apply for the 851 that were still up for grabs, according to a new analysis of data THE CITY obtained from the health department last month via a public records request. 

When the permits were launched 16 years ago, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg touted the program as an “important public health initiative that responds to the need for fresh produce close to home,” and said it would “provide opportunities for vendors to make a living selling fresh fruits and vegetables in communities where healthy food can be difficult to find.” Five years after the program’s launch, in 2013, more than 500 vendors held those produce permits.

But the gap between what the city promised and what it has delivered has widened since then. Nearly 1,500 vendors are now on the permit waitlist, which has been sealed off since May 2022 after briefly opening for the three months prior. 

Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the non-profit Street Vendor Project,  said the disconnect is indicative of an “extremely onerous bureaucratic process” that’s created unnecessary delays for prospective vendors.

“Clearly there’s an issue there,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said. “People who want to be able to work as Green Carts vendors should be able to just apply to do it. There shouldn’t be this huge backlog of months and months or years and years of waiting, to the point where it might not even be relevant for the person who got on the waitlist back in the day.”

Vendors who have been called off the waitlist, in fact, do not generally turn in an application to begin the permitting process, the data shows. Last year, just 91 of the 600 vendors called off the queue officially applied.

For vendors who are still interested, however, the wait to put in an application has been painfully slow, with months sometimes passing before a new group of applicants — no more than 160 at a time in recent years — was offered permits.  

About a month after THE CITY submitted its request for the vendor data in April, the department called 750 vendors off the waitlist. The department didn’t say how many of them accepted a permit.

Shari Logan, a department spokesperson, told THE CITY it is “working on ways to speed up the application process,” including by issuing more applications at once. 

She added that 309 Green Carts vendors now have permits — meaning the number more than doubled since THE CITY obtained the data last month.

Advocates have called on the city to do more to permit legal vending, and more so as newly arrived migrants have turned to vending over the last two years. Although the health department in 2022 amended regulations to allow Green Carts vendors to also sell water, nuts, and cut fruits and vegetables — in addition to whole produce as was allowed before — the permit waitlist has yet to reopen.

“There are tons of cut fruit vendors in New York City, but they can’t get permits,” said Matthew Shapiro, Street Vendor Project’s legal director. “And ostensibly, now there are permits available that these vendors could use but because of the waiting list or because of all of the rules, they’re not able to do it. So the government has failed to figure out a way to make it so these vendors can actually do what they’re doing legally.”

High-Cart Costs

Logan said the health department is now reaching out to vendors to understand why only a handful of them have turned in applications after being called off the Green Carts waitlist. 

But Shapiro, who helps vendors navigate permits, said it is in part due to the difficult economics of running a perishable food business within the health department’s restrictive regulations.

Green Carts permits are allocated by boroughs, with set quotas for each, and legally operable only within police precinct areas where “the rate of fresh produce consumption is substantially lower than the citywide average.” And unlike produce vendors at farmer’s markets who can more or less operate from impromptu set-ups, Green Carts vendors are required by law to operate from set-ups that meet specific standards  — which Shapiro estimated cost about $5,000 to procure.

Ernesto Garcia, a 39-year-old native of the Mexican state of Puebla, said it cost him and his mother at least $36,000 to start up their Green Carts business in Soundview, Bronx when his mother’s name was called off the waitlist in 2022, after what he said had been more than a decade of waiting.

First it was $30,000 for a van to transport his produce, then it was another $6,000 for the cart itself. Then there was the $500 monthly rent he had to pay a health department–approved facility to park his cart nightly, on top of another $500 he spent about four times a week to source fresh produce from the Hunts Points produce market.

Even after working 17 hour days — starting from when he’d arrive at the produce market at 5 a.m. to when he’d return to his van to a garage at 10 p.m. — Garcia said he would gross no more than $230 on a good day, and often lose money on a bad day. 

“The gains wouldn’t last because I was only dedicated to the business, and I didn’t have another job aside from this. And sometimes the produce would go bad, and I would not recover the money,” Garcia told THE CITY in Spanish. “Sometimes I would come out short, and I would have to ask my siblings to lend me money.”

Seven months ago, Garcia said, he and his mother decided to shutter their Green Carts because of his mother’s old age and because they can no longer sustain the business’s losses.

“I feel very frustrated and sad that it didn’t turn out as planned, and I don’t know if it was because I didn’t put in enough effort, or because the economy is bad, but I’m sad that we had to make that decision,” said Garcia, who’s now working nights in a pizza shop.

Other vendors who’ve been called off the Green Carts waitlist have also surrendered their opportunity to apply for a permit after considering possible profits and losses.

That includes Adelaida Simon Carrasco, who had been selling tamales and pozoles outside the N train station on Bay Parkway since 2016, until she was hit by a car in 2022 and took a break from vending to focus on recovery.

Simon Carrasco recalled submitting her name to the Green Carts waitlist around 2016 after receiving a $1,000 fine for unlicensed sales. And while she had been primarily interested in selling prepared food, she entered the produce permits waitlist because no other vending waitlist had been open at the time.

When the 40-year-old was called off the waitlist in 2022, however, she ultimately chose not to pursue a permit because she wasn’t confident that the business was going to be profitable.

“It’s not a good business for me, because fruits are seasonal — maybe in the summer, I can sell a lot. But what I want is a food permit,” Simon Carrasco said.

And because street vendors can hold only one permit at a time, Kaufman-Gutierrez added, a number of sellers also end up abandoning the opportunity to apply for a Green Carts permit once they’re called off the waitlist, so they can hold onto startup costs in case they’re selected from other waitlists to apply for permits that could yield more lucrative incomes — food vending permits, for example.

Garcia, meanwhile, is making the food and working the register at a pizza shop. The 39-year-old said he has been selling gum, chocolates and candies with his mother and late father on subway cars and on streets since they emigrated to New York when he was seven years old — and hopes to return to vending produce one day.

But to do that, he would first have to find a way back to the Green Carts waitlist when it next reopens, because current regulations would not allow for his mother to transfer the permit into his hands.

“I want to add myself to the Green Carts waitlist if it ever opens again,” Garcia said in Spanish. “It’s an experience that serves as a lesson for the future when I want to open a business so I have an idea of how to work.”

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Unlicensed vendors who have long sold their wares in front of the massive and long-vacant Kingsbridge Armory say law enforcement officials have been pushing them away over the last two months, hollowing out what had been a bustling streetscape.

“It’s stupid. What motive would you have?” a vendor who asked to be identified as Maria who’s been selling clothes there for about two years said in Spanish. “Why don’t the police go harass the drug dealers?” 

Before the stepped-up enforcement, which was preceded by signs warning it was coming, vendors would show up as early as 3 a.m. to secure spots on the sidewalk. “It was packed, like people had to fight over spots,” Maria said. 

The sidewalk was much quieter when THE CITY visited on Thursday, as many vendors have stayed away or curtailed their hours as NYPD and Department of Sanitation officers have stepped up. It’s in some ways an unlikely site for an enforcement push given that the armory has been vacant for three decades. That means vendors in its shadow aren’t competing directly with businesses for sidewalk space, or much else.   

The city has increased its crackdown on unlicensed Bronx street vendors since sanitation took over the lead enforcement role last April. While the number of tickets fell 22% citywide during the sanitation agency’s first year in that role, they went up by 29% in The Bronx, THE CITY reported previously. Bronx Community District 8, which includes the armory, saw the sharpest increase of any district, to 27 tickets from two the previous year, when the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection had been the lead enforcement agency for illegal vending.

Vincent Gragnani, spokesperson for the sanitation department, said the agency has issued eight summonses in front of the Kingsbridge Armory so far this calendar year. 

“Our enforcement work is rooted in the belief that all New Yorkers, across every neighborhood, in every borough, deserve clean, safe sidewalks,” Gragnani told THE CITY in a written statement. “We take a warnings-first approach” but “also engage in robust enforcement to protect cleanliness and quality of life.” 

Gragnani noted that DSNY “did not create street vending laws nor set the fines.”

“We enforce these laws, with a focus on situations where vending has created dirty conditions, safety issues, items being left out overnight, and setups that block curbs, subway entrances, bus stops, sidewalks or store entrances.” 

Many unlicensed vendors have applied for street vending licenses, waiting months and even years for any response. The maximum number of licenses available for general merchandise sellers citywide is 853, a cap that advocacy group The Street Vendor Project and Bronx Councilmember Pierina Sanchez, who represents Kingsbridge, are looking to lift through proposed legislation.  

‘The Community Is Really Struggling’ 

The 500,000-square-foot, nine-story tall armory is in the early stages of its latest redevelopment plan, with $200 million in city and state grants awaiting the next developer as the city’s Economic Development Corporation considers various proposals. The city has owned the property since 1996, and has previously failed to implement plans to establish a mall and then an ice rink there.

Developing the building would provide a major economic opportunity in a neighborhood where many residents and business owners alike struggle with rising costs. Business owners last year protested what they said were one local landlord’s efforts to evict them to free space for the armory’s coming development, the Bronx Times reported. 

“The community is really struggling. What our folks really need is support with the small businesses, right? We need leases. We need long-term leases. And then we need vendors to get access to permits and licenses so that they could be able to operate their business without being harassed by the sanitation police, but also so they can abide by the rules,” Juan Nuñez, lead armory organizer for the Northwest Bronx Community Clergy and Coalition, one of the groups that has pushed to utilize the armory’s majestic space. 

“The last thing we wanted to see was for police to come and start confiscating and giving them fines,” he added. “I don’t how any of the raids are actually helping anyone at all.” 

Local small business operators said that they had mixed opinions on street vendors selling their goods in front of the armory. 

“That’s a headache ‘cause after the people leave, they’re leaving trash behind. They’ll leave it in front of our stores,” said 53-year-old Miguel Ramos, who has managed King’s Gift Shop directly across Kingsbridge Road from the armory for 27 years. Still, he said, he had no issue with vendors earning a buck as long as they keep it tidy. “I wouldn’t have no problem because people gotta make their money, pay their bills.” 

A few storefronts down at S&R Food Mart, Mamadou Bah, 33, who has been working there since 2007, said he misses the street-sellers vendors who brought more customer traffic to his business. 

“The vendors used to bring more business for other businesses,” Bah told THE CITY. “Just give them a license. Don’t make it harder for them.”

Haidee Chu contributed reporting.

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