NYC's Struggling Street Vendors Confront Their Worst-Ever Crisis
They’re urging city lawmakers to pass a bill that would lift a decades-old cap on mobile vending permits and enable them to be eligible for relief aid.
In November, street vendors marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to commemorate International Street Vendor Day and demand that New York City Council include them in Covid-19 recovery efforts by passing Vendor Reform Bill, Intro 1116.
Photographer: Gabby Jones/BloombergNew York City’s roughly 20,000 street food vendors are in a crisis like they’ve never seen before, crippled by a pandemic that compounded perennial challenges such as ticketing and over-policing for the majority that operate without proper permits.
There’s a relatively easy fix to that problem, advocates say: lifting a 37-year-old cap that limits mobile food vending licenses to about 2,900 citywide and forces many to turn to an underground market for permits.