BRONX TIMES REPORTER, J BTR ULY 23-29, 2021 9
street vendors in Manhattan.
Mobile street vendors were declared
essential workers during the
pandemic by Democratic Gov. Andrew
Cuomo, but some didn’t see a dime of
federal stimulus money, with immigrants
who are in the U.S. illegally ineligible
for federal Paycheck Protection
Program loans and excluded from
stimulus checks and unemployment
insurance.
It didn’t help that street vending
was gutted during the early months
of the pandemic when NYC was in the
throes of an economic shutdown.
A January 2021 reportby Women
in Informal Employment Organizing
showed that 98% of the 63 street
vendors surveyed, many of whom are
food vendors, had no earnings in April
2020.
By April 2020, according to the
same report, 100% of respondents had
stopped working in that same month.
By June, only 26% were working parttime
or more.
“There is a barrier of entry that is
so steep for street vendors to be able
to be seen as legitimate small businesses,
even though they are essential
to the fabric of New York City,” said
Kaufman-Gutierrez. “Street vendors
who were considered essential during
the pandemic, and many who became
street vendors to stay afl oat during the
pandemic, are being denied and hit
with extraordinary fi nes.”
Lucio, who lives in the U.S. without
legal permission and didn’t want
to provide his last namebecause of his
immigration status, said that when he
lost his job as a restaurant worker during
the pandemic, his work as a street
vendor selling tacos on Fordham Road
was a means of making money and
fi nding stability.
However, because he was an unpermitted
vendor, he was levied three
rounds of fi nes totaling $2,050.
“After having the street vendor
taco business I learned about the regulations
but the offi ces were closed
and I could not get a license, ” Lucio
said through a translator. “They recently
gave me three tickets, one of the
fi nes was for not having a license. We
are still in the pandemic and we do not
know when recovery is coming, and
we have not received help from the
government.”
While momentum for S1175A continues
to grow — including calls to legalize
street vending and erase two years
of fi nes against unpermitted vendors
in the city from Democrat state lawmakers
Assemblyman Kenneth Burgos
and Sen. Alessandra Biaggi — business
leaders like Wilma Alonso, executive
director of the Fordham Road Business
Improvement District, are opposed to
it.
Alonso told the Bronx Times that
she’s not “anti-vendor.” She, however,
did express concerns that without restriction
and regulations, unchecked
vendors could turn places like Fordham
into a “wild, wild west” of competing
interests.
“Even before the pandemic, we saw
an overcrowding and lack of regulation
with street vendors on Fordham
Road, and during the pandemic, it really
increased even as we tried to social
distance,” said Alonso. “It’s hard
to understand how someone can be
doing business if they are unlicensed,
and thus unregulated when many legitimate
Fordham Road businesses
have a different set of rules they need
to abide by.”
Alonso isn’t alone in those concerns.
Dani Padilla, a licensed street vendor,
said she is concerned that without
a cap on who or how many vendors can
get licensed, there could be a glut of
vendors struggling to make money.
“There are rules for a reason and
many street vendors during the pandemic
didn’t respect the time and energy
it took for some of us to get permitted
to sell what we want,” Padilla said.
“Should 20,000 people be allowed to be
vendors? ‘No.’ Because how can 20,000
vendors all make money when we’re going
to be selling the same stuff.”
.
A protest rally was held in Fordham on July 15, 2021, to call for the legalization of all street
vending statewide — an industry ripe with people in the U.S. illegally. Photo by Robbie Sequeira
Bottom left: Starting in 2022, roughly 400
vendor permits will be issued annually
over the next decade in the city but that’sn
enough for some protestors.
Bottom right: A shaved ice vendor serves a
cool treat on a hot day to this young girls.