Turf Wars: No Parking for Street Food Vendors!

UPDATE: Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart, a New York Times article by Julia Moskin 6/30/09

Dessert Truck sells gourmet, single size treats

Click on the image to see a slideshow about the variety of food vendors on New York’s streets.

Dan Rossi, a disabled veteran, sells hotdogs on 5th Avenue.

From an enclosed metal cart advertising hotdogs for $2.00, Vietnam veteran Dan Rossi serves up the iconic New York City street food, sometimes laden with a colorful mix of chili, melted cheese, onions or relish, to visitors on their way up or down the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Food cart vending is how Rossi used to gross almost a million dollars a year as one of New York City’s thousands of small business owners.

At the peak of his business in the early 1990s, Rossi built and leased almost 500 hot dog, candy, fruit and coffee carts to fellow veterans, who fanned out to sell quick snacks across the city. But the City Council changed the laws in its Administrative Code when Rudolph Giuliani was in office, and Rossi lost his business overnight. He now owns only one cart, which he sets up on 5th Avenue, in front of the museum.

Street vendors must follow a set of municipal laws that determine how they are licensed, where they can operate and what they can sell. Some state laws trump city law to govern veteran street vendors. It is state law that allows Rossi to place his cart at least 100 feet from any city park entrance. He measured the distance from the museum steps to the paths leading into Central Park, on either side of the museum, and identified the spot where he can legally park his pushcart. That spot is directly in front of the Met’s door, much to the vexation of museum officials, who Rossi said made repeated calls to the police to have his cart removed. Once police exhausted every form of persuasion and found they had no law that could move Rossi, museum officials began parking a utility vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, in Rossi’s spot. But he has room to set up next to the empty cart each day.

Rossi's cart on 5th Avenue

Two other food stands park on either side of the museum steps. The owner of those carts won a City Parks Department bid and pays hefty fees—upwards of $200,000 annually—to sell ice cream, hotdogs and soda. They aren’t happy with Rossi there. Neither is Parks Commissioner Adrienne Benepe, who mentioned that he once operated a cold soup food cart in the park when he was a teenager. Benepe expressed disappointment with Rossi and said he is only looking out for himself.  Benepe also confirmed for reporters that Rossi’s lower prices had taken away business from the park carts. But Rossi has successfully fought for his right to vend hot dogs, and the police and the Parks Department have stopped trying to make him move.

When Rossi returned from service as a Marine sergeant in Vietnam, he said it was hard to work for someone else when he was used to giving orders. He went into business for himself, turning sheet metal into food carts and selling them.  Then in 1985, he was offered a chance to buy more than 100 permits and he got into the vending business.  He built carts to go with the permits, as the law required, and tried to lease them for $7 per day.  He said for a while the company languished, with only 30 carts leased at the end of seven years.  It was the arrest of a permit counterfeiter in Queens that finally sent Rossi business from vendors looking for legal carts. Over time, he bought more permits and created a variety of carts for lease. But it all ended in 1995, when, as part of a wave of reforms to control street vending, the New York City Council approved local law 15, declaring each cart owner could possess only one cart permit.

The change in the law also capped the number of available permits to 3,100, making a permit harder to obtain. Local law 15 stopped cart owners like Rossi from keeping a stock of carts ready with permits. Council members had sided with the Giuliani administration, which charged that some cart owners were exploiting food vendors. But according to the frustrated Rossi, who relinquished his permits, the law created a black market where permit owners could now name their price for permits that vendors needed on their carts. Today, vendors pay as much as $8,000 for a permit. The city’s fee for the same is $200.

The city’s Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation maintains permit applicant waiting lists for every category of vendor, from bag salesman to disabled veteran. There are lists for temporary and permanent applicants that each currently have 240 names.  The office could give no date as to when a vendor could hope to obtain a permit legally.  Once an applicant gets a permit, they may renew it by mail indefinitely. It is those permits —a majority of them, according to Rossi—that are being illegally leased.

A spokesperson from the Department of Health (DOH) checked on the legality of leasing a permit when questioned about the idea of a “permit black market.” She said it is not illegal for a permit to be leased, it is simply illegal for most people to possess more than one permit.  She stated in an email, “Since 1995, only one permit per person. There were people who were exclusive distributors of a product that could keep multiple permits – grandfathered in. All others had to release their other permits if they had more than one. The cart can be leased (the cart has the permit on it that goes with it). So you lease the cart, with its accompanying permit.”

Regulating the waves of people who come to the city to work is a monumental task fraught with conflicting interests. The same stories of individuals trying to make their fortunes, the powerful using their influence to protect their interests and lawmakers trying to construct fair and clear guidelines can be applied to other professions. Medallion taxi cabs and gypsy cars vying for fares has drivers on both sides crying foul and demanding new regulation. Shop owners selling knock-off merchandise to tourists looking for a bargain are constantly raided and their goods confiscated by police. Then they set up shop again the next day. First Amendment vendor artists compete for free park space with peddlers selling reproduced photographs that are clearly not their own.

Mayors and council members of New York City have struggled with how to restrict street vendors for as long as there has been a city.  A headline from the New York Times in 1897 reads,

PUSHCARTS IN PARK ROW; Continued Complaint of Obstruction of Traffic in the Vicinity of the Bridge Entrance. CAPT. VREDENBURGH’S REMEDY Would Have Park Row Exempted from the Use of Peddlers — Letter of President Barnes of the Astor Place Bank Arouses Much Interest.

Today, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and shop owners complain of overcrowded streets, unsightly messes and the loss of patrons.  Vendors assert their right to have access to public streets and say they want to define how they make a living.

In recent history, Mayor Koch endorsed a crackdown on vendors and created a special police unit to clear Midtown and Wall Street.  Ten years later, Mayor Dinkins spent $2.5 million for a Street Vendor Action Plan that drew four city agencies into the governance process.  But it was Mayor Giuliani in 1994 who upset vendors the most with the formation of a Street Vendor Review Panel. The board was heavily lobbied by the real estate industry and shut down 560 city blocks to vending. Under the leadership of Rossi and the Big Apple Food Vendors Association, vendors marched in the streets. That was just before City Council passed Local Law 15 and Rossi lost his mini hotdog empire.

Veterans, who had been exempt from municipal pushcart laws since 1894, lost ground when they were included in the ban against vending near Ground Zero. Lawmakers in Albany refreshed an expired law from 1991 that restricted veterans to certain streets. That satisfied many who were offended by what the New York Times called “money-grubbing hucksters” selling patriotic merchandise and food to the swell of visitors at the site. The law passed in 2004. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg echoed the sentiments of real estate developers and BIDs when he said in a statement. ”Without this law, many streets have been clogged with vendors, making it hazardous for pedestrians and hurting our quality of life.”

The advocacy group The Street Vendors Project, part of the Urban Justice Center, issued a pamphlet supporting the intention of local law 15, but urged vendors to organize to demand fairer enforcement.  It says, “In 1995, City Council passed the ‘one-vendor, one-permit’ law to limit the exploitation of vendors by the large corporations that had accumulated hundreds of permits. Companies vying for vending spots in the parks, however, are exempt; coincidentally, the Parks Department raises millions of dollars every year from vendor concessions. This exemption has fostered a system where several well-connected companies have grown rich while their workers receive less than minimum wage.”

Fauzia operates a mini kitched on 161st Street in the Bronx

To raise money for advocacy and raise awareness about vending, the Street Vendors Project holds a Vendy Awards competition every year.  Fauzia Abdul-Rahman, a finalist in this year’s competition, is a cart operator who serves Jamaican jerk chicken and codfish on 161st Street in the Bronx.  She shops at the local farmer’s market to get the freshest organic vegetables for her stews.  As a single mom with limited opportunities to work, vending has helped Rahman become successful as her own boss with her own hours. She recently invested in a new $25,000 kitchen-on-wheels, which she says is much warmer than standing on the street beside a cart.  Rahman has been vending for 15 years. She says she slept outside the DOH the night before a permit lottery in 1993, and the line went around the building. When she renewed the permit, she applied to transfer it to her new cart. Rahman says she found her calling and she’s not giving up that permit for anything.

For recent immigrants like Bangladeshi vendor, Anwar Hussein, a chance to rent a cart with a permit from a vending company gave him the chance to work independently.  He said he makes about $400 per week. His entire family, a wife, four daughters, a son and his mother, take time to work the cart. He told the Gotham Gazette, “I went to the hot dog company, I rented the pushcart, and I looked at the area around Canal Street. Every day at nine or ten, I pick up my pushcart from the garage downtown, buy merchandise from another garage, and push my cart to my spot on Broadway and Canal Street. I work from 10 to 7 — longer hours in the summer — every day of the week.”

Wagih Salem arrived in the U.S. less that six months ago from Cairo, and relied on the extensive network of Egyptian food vendors to find work. With a wife and toddler to support back home, Salem was happy to quickly find a company where they spoke Arabic. They let him rent a hotdog and kebab cart with a valid permit.  He would not have been able to start a vending operation on his own. In Cairo, Salem had worked in a retail store and didn’t enjoy the work as much as he likes being out on the street, joking with the handbag seller from Senegal who shares a corner on 6th Avenue with him. What he likes most, he said, are the people. “Today, I met people from Germany and Japan. People come here from all over the world and buy my chicken.”

Dan Rossi says he operated a business similar to those that helped Hussein and Salem.  By owning carts ready to go on the street, he helped many veterans reenter the work world and find the means to live independently.  Ever since he turned over his street vending licenses to the Department of Health, he has lobbied for change. Testifying to city council, helping other vets and filing court petitions has become his 13-year personal mission.  He refinanced and later lost his home in Long Island to get by and pay for court fees and now lives with a daughter in Connecticut. Rossi depends on the income from his hotdog cart, but by asserting his veterans’ right to be on 5th Avenue, he also stays in the fight.

City Councilman and mayoral candidate, Tony Avella, an opponent of the city’s real estate industry, came to Rossi’s aid this past spring. He used his sponsor’s privilege to gain a hearing for two amendments that would undo local law 15 and give entrepreneurs the opportunity to own and obtain permits for multiple carts.  That day, the Committee of Consumer Affairs heard testimony from many veterans who want, in their words, to be treated better by the city.

“Dan Rossi has been vilified for being a whistle blower,” said Avella at the hearing. “Dan, I’m ashamed of what the city did to you.” Then the councilman expressed his hope for a quick decision, and assured the chair of the committee, councilman Leroy Comrie, that he would push to get his bills to the full council for a vote. That’s the farthest the bills have gone to date.

Later by phone, Avella expressed his disappointment for how Rossi lost his business. “He has been vilified by city government. They were trying to get rid of the illegal ones and the ones that were charging exorbitant rates. Dan was never doing that. Dan was trying to help people get a job and help out his fellow disabled veterans. And every time I started to investigate this issue, I’d get this ‘Oh you can’t help Dan Rossi. He’s a terrible person.’ It is so disgraceful that we’re not helping disabled veterans who have given so much for this country. We’re not doing the right thing by them.”

Sean Basinski, director of the Street Vendor Project, opposes Avella’s bill to amend Local Law 15 because it would allow owners like Rossi to own many carts again. He worries that putting the cart permits back in the hands of a few businesses will force out individuals, especially new immigrants, who are also trying to build a new life.

“We don’t believe one person should be allowed to make millions of dollars for simply owning the permits, while hundreds of people who are actually doing the work in the streets every day are barely scraping by,” he said.

Basinski acknowledged that the artificial cap on permits has created a thriving black market and he said his organization is trying to expose the people who are not using the permits themselves. He has a list of all permit holders, some of whom date back 40 years.  Every once in awhile, Basinski said, his office devotes some time to calling a few people on the list. Invariably, he finds some who no longer operate their carts, and count on leasing the permit as a reliable part of their retirement.

His office also confirmed that they are trying to expose a permit leasing scheme vendors have told them about where companies who operate a legitimate practice of filing renewal applications for vendors also maintain a list of deceased or deported vendors, or vendors who quit the business, and keep renewing their permits. Then they lease them for a profit.

Basinski advocates lifting the number of available permits.   If each vendor could easily apply for a permit when they get their food handling certification from the DOH, he says the need for a black market would end.

Councilman Leroy Comrie agrees. In another Consumer Affairs Committee hearing this past November, the committee reviewed a bill sponsored by Charles Barron, one of eight bills submitted by various council members that day regarding street vending, that would increase the permit cap to 25,000.  Comrie says that his office has investigated complaints about the black market for permits, and calls it “the Wild West out there,” for vendors trying to get a cart with a permit.

At the hearing, Comrie asked a panel representing the agencies that enforce vendor laws if they were aware of the permit black market.  Silence from the panel lasted long enough for Comrie to repeat his question.

In response, panel member Shari C. Hyman, the mayor’s deputy criminal justice coordinator repeated her earlier statement that raising the cap raises the enforcement burden for police. She repeated the request asking for a law that would allow police to fingerprint any vender receiving a summons. She said fingerprinting is a cornerstone of enforcement and would provide a record including a vendor’s identity that would help them better track violations and vending legal status. Barron expressed outrage, to the applause of a full gallery in the council chambers. “Well, if you have enough licenses for everybody, you wouldn’t have to fingerprint anybody!”

Comrie added, “To imply there is no black market is an insult to this audience. People are being exploited. To sit here today and act like there is not a problem is an injustice.”
Chris Manning, an assistant commissioner at the DOH, said if in fact there are permits being leased, “We would certainly want to know about those.” Comrie assured him that there was already a list of offenders being compiled that he would get soon.

Comrie asked the panel if a vendor count had ever been conducted. When they said no, Comrie called the panel’s fingerprinting request a “head in the sand approach” and demanded a vendor count.  He added that, with the collapse of Wall Street and the economy at risk, “This is not a time to limit the people at the bottom. They’re not going to get a slice of the $700,000,000.”

Councilman Kendal Stewart was also at the hearing, and he echoed the Council’s frustration with the manner in which the DOH and other agencies have overseen street vending. “Seven different agencies and you can’t come up with a task force? How come?” he asked the panel.

Comrie said in an earlier interview that he also supports the one-vendor, one-cart system. He says it was introduced to protect immigrants from being exploited by working long hours for little pay. He knows right now it is difficult for a food vendor to obtain a permit and to navigate the legal system. He finds fault with the convoluted set of rules and multiple agency oversight that makes it nearly impossible to enforce any of the laws well, even the matter of illegal permits.

Rossi said he knows there are as many as 800 veterans who want a chance to operate vending carts, and businessmen like him want another chance to build and stock carts to lease to this potential labor force. If the laws are changed and the caps lifted, there is still little chance he will be able to own and license a fleet of carts. Although he isn’t getting any younger, he’ll have to find a way to build and sell carts again, or lease them to vendors who have their own permit. He isn’t sure if lifting the cap will do any more that make it tougher for veterans like him to find spots on the street.  He said the other part of the equation nobody is talking about is opening up the banned streets again. He thinks that would reduce congestion while giving more vendors a chance to work.

“There’s no real demand for permits,” Rossi said. “There is a demand for jobs.”