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Local activists and members of the City Council raged over a move to have the city sanitation department lead enforcement efforts over street vendors next month. Activists held a rally near City Hall on Wednesday over the Adams administration’s decision, which they said was made without consulting vendors.
As attendees delivered remarks in English and Spanish criticizing the administration’s decision, street vendors in attendance held signs reading, “Don’t treat me like trash,” and “We need fair vending enforcement.”
“Street vendors are small businesses,” Mohamed Attia, director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, told Gothamist. “Street vendors are not trash or recyclables that should be collected.”
It’s the latest in the ongoing conflict between officials and the more than 20,000 estimated street vendors in the city — most of whom are immigrants. Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city moved enforcement away from the NYPD — which advocates said excessively criminalized these workers — to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Earlier this month, the Adams administration said it would move enforcement to the sanitation department on April 1.
“Street vendors are a vital part of New York City’s economic and cultural landscape, but unregulated street vending is a quality-of-life concern that affects the health, safety, accessibility, prosperity, and cleanliness of our streets, sidewalks, and neighborhoods,” Adams said in an emailed statement to Gothamist on Wednesday.
But Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who also chairs the sanitation committee, said she suspects Adams’ decision was a “calculated move to avoid oversight.”
Other officials — including Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez and Deputy Public Advocate Elizabeth Kennedy, echoed similar sentiments.
“I’m floored by this decision to move enforcement to the Department of Sanitation,” Gutiérrez said. “It speaks volumes of this unilateral decision to say they will be uniquely in charge of enforcement. The only thing I hear is trash.”
Attia criticized Adams’ enforcement policy, and said that more could be done to address the decadeslong conflict between vendors and brick-and-mortar businesses, which claim that unlicensed vendors in makeshift stalls are harming profits.
“This is really not the right approach to enhance the enforcement of oversight of street vending,” Attia said.
A decadeslong cap on the amount of permits available to street vendors means many are working illegally or are paying thousands of dollars under the table to lease the limited supply of existing permits. And roughly 12,000 people are on a waitlist for vending permits that closed over a decade ago, according to the Community Service Society of New York.
Longtime tamale vendor Sonia Perez also lamented that the administration took action without consulting sellers like her.
“We should be recognizing the work and contributions of street vendors,” she said, addressing the crowd in Spanish. “And create systems to support their existence.”
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