The New York City Council voted today to pass legislation from Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams to create a Division of Street Vendor Assistance. The new unit, housed within the Department of Small Business Services, would be charged with providing training, outreach, and education to all food vendors and general vendors regarding entrepreneurship and compliance with all applicable local laws, rules, and regulation. This would give street vendors access to many of the same tools afforded to other small businesses.
“Street vendors are New York City’s smallest businesses, and provide some of the most affordable options for New Yorkers facing an increasingly unaffordable city – yet they don’t have the support from the city they need to survive," said Public Advocate Williams on the vote. “In speaking with vendors about the barriers they face, it’s clear we can do more, and an office dedicated to street vendor assistance will help these entrepreneurs navigate obstacles to licensing, inconsistency in enforcement, and regulations that make it near-impossible to operate in a successful and sustained way. I thank the advocates and vendors who worked on this bill and package, and the Speaker and Council for taking it up. We can build a strong, safe street vending environment in our neighborhoods.”
Yesterday, the Public Advocate released a review of the street vending industry, Pushing Forward: Legislative Reforms to Fix NYC’s Street Vending System, which documented the barriers vendors face and provided recommendations on how to support the city’s smallest businesses while enacting regulations that help make operations more safe and orderly.
In the review, he urged passage of not only his own bill, Intro 408-A but a full package of legislation including on the issue. In total, the Council voted to pass three bills on the issue, including:
Int. No. 431-B – which would reform NYC’s street vending system to balance incentives with enforcement by requiring increased enforcement personnel, adding new mandatory suspension and revocation license language, and issuing licenses to bring existing vendors into the regulatory system.
Int. No. 1251-A – which would authorize the department to issue more applications each year, so that up to the fully permitted number supervisory licenses are issued every twelve months.
In addition to the establishment of the Division of Street Vendor Assistance, the Public Advocate’s bill will require the commissioner of small business services to update the department’s programs to facilitate services specifically for street vendor small businesses.
Street vending continues to be an economic anchor for many New Yorkers, as is a particularly important cornerstone for many immigrants, people of color, and military veterans to successfully operate the city’s smallest businesses.
With over 20,000 street vendors operating in the city, change needs to be made to ensure NYC’s smallest businesses can thrive rather than face an unsafe system that too often criminalizes this economic engine of our city rather than advance the opportunity and diversity it presents. In 2024 alone, the NYPD and Department of Sanitation issued nearly double the amount of vending-related tickets issued in 2023, and five times higher than the number of tickets issued in 2019.
In recent years, the street vendor industry has been subject to new obstacles including the Adams administration’s approach to enforcement, which placed jurisdiction over the industry on the Department of Sanitation while simultaneously relying on the NYPD for civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms. This convoluted and contradictory approach has led to greater confusion and potential for violations and overenforcement. Honest merchants have felt harassed, without a pathway to access the proper business licenses, sometimes being unfairly arrested, and without adequate resources or clear regulations to follow.
The newly passed legislation now goes to Mayor Adams’ desk.