A Just New York Requires More Food Vending Permits
The arrest of a subway-station churro vendor reveals a deeper problem with New York’s permit economy
After Elsa — a woman selling churros in the Broadway Junction subway station — was stopped by police and handcuffed, New Yorkers’ anger was rightfully directed at Governor Andrew Cuomo, who plans to add 500 additional police offers to the city’s subway system.
Along with Mayor Bill De Blasio, uncharacteristically marching in lockstep with his frenemy in Albany, the Governor has promoted the idea that “the feeling that subways are unsafe is up.”
But if anyone is feeling more unsafe in the subways lately, it’s the nonviolent turnstile jumpers, food vendors, and unwitting riders around them who are being traumatized by officers raging into cars and onto platforms — sometimes with guns drawn and handcuffs out — for violations that should earn nothing more than a court summons.
New Yorkers are right to be indignant about the Governor’s costly and unnecessary police presence, but there’s another issue that Elsa’s experience should spotlight for residents interested in a more just and equitable city: our severe shortage of food vending permits.
In justifying their treatment of Elsa, the NYPD said she had received ten previous summonses for unlicensed vending. But that doesn’t mean Elsa is trying to avoid health-inspection scrutiny or operate outside the parameters of the law. It only means that the city has made it impossible for new food vendors—often immigrants doing their best to get by in an ever-more-expensive metropolis—to access legitimate food vending permits.
Street-vending permits were capped in the early 1980s under Mayor Ed Koch. Since permits can be renewed indefinitely, many are still held by individuals who no longer use them. Instead, they lease access to their permits to active vendors—often to multiple hardworking families at the same time—milking their scarce resource and keeping new entrants out of the legitimate market:
There are currently just 3,000 permits that allow city street vendors to legally hawk hot dogs, halal platters and other items. The number has been the same for more than three decades, forcing vendors pay as much as $25,000 for permits on the black market when getting one from the city costs just $200, vendor advocates say.
The system hasn’t been expanded for over 35 years. As Pete Buttigieg likes to say, this problem has existed since before I was born.
We need to raise the cap on food vending permits here in New York now, and multiple bills have been put forth in the City Council to do just that. Most recently, Councilwoman Margaret Chin proposed creating “4,000 new permits over the course of a decade, in addition to creating a new city-run enforcement unit to ensure carts were being run by permit-holders to eliminate black market permit sales and rentals.”
But, as evidenced by Elsa’s precarious situation, no action has yet been taken.
The Mayor has sided with the Chamber of Commerce and worried store owners who think more street vending will cannibalize their business. But data suggests that vendors don’t actually pose a risk to storefront business owners. According to Vice reporting on the issue, a 2018 study’s conclusions aligned with common sense: “vendors avoid selling their wares in front of similar shops, preferring to park near banks, vacant storefronts, or chain stores wherever possible.”
Vendors are making their case to the city, and the Street Vendor Project is leading the charge—organizing over 1,800 currently operating vendors seeking relief from a supposedly progressive city government. But until the City Council and administration take action to equitably expand the number of available permits, vendors like Elsa will be forced to continue operating outside the system.
And, even as they contribute to the city economy and work to to support their families, vendors like Elsa will remain vulnerable to extortion by bad-acting permit-holders and to victimization by the police. For a city interested in equality and justice, that’s a status quo that’s hard to swallow.
