After back-to-back NYPD sweeps along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, street vendors on Thursday marched to City Hall and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to demand that the City Council pass a law to lift the cap on street vending licenses — which for general merchandise sellers have been limited to 853 since 1979.
The NYPD raids on the busy drag between Jackson Heights and Corona made headlines Monday and Tuesday, and continued into Wednesday, with Sanitation Department police — now charged with taking the lead role in enforcement — also patrolling the major thoroughfare on Thursday afternoon, according to Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the nonprofit Street Vendor Project.
Mirna Bodegas, 53, told THE CITY in Spanish that she had been selling water and bottled drinks when five uniformed NYPD officers confiscated her goods Wednesday and issued her a $250 civil summons for unlicensed vending.
“I haven’t been able to get them back because of the cost of the tickets,” said Bodegas. She said that she and her husband usually support themselves entirely though vending, often selling clothes and gloves to day laborers in the wee hours of the morning, grossing $200 on a good day — and twice having that merchandise confiscated.
Asked for comment about this week’s raids, which came after a series of covers, stories and editorials in the New York Post about the Queens vendors, a NYPD spokesperson who did not provide their name said the department “maintains its authority to enforce all violations and will assist any agency when conducting operations.”
All told, the NYPD issued 12 tickets during this week’s enforcement action, the spokesperson said. The department added that its officers “use a high level of discretion to resolve issues without the need for enforcement,” but did not answer questions about what prompted the sweep, how it coordinated the action with the sanitation department, or the violations cited for the tickets.
Bodegas moved to New York City from Honduras in 2010 to seek safety from violence and political turmoil, she said, after her husband was shot in the neck. The pair have lived in Corona since then, she added, and turned to vending about seven years ago after she struggled in the restaurant industry while speaking limited English and her husband suffered from a stroke and could no longer walk and work at his longtime job at a carwash.
“Vending is the only way we can make it work,” Bodegas said. “But now every time that sanitation or police come by, he gets nervous. He has tremors, and he becomes very stricken with grief and fearful of what could happen.”
Another vendor who sells on the intersection of Roosevelt Avenue and Junction Boulevard, and who declined to be named, said she was slapped with a $250 ticket by NYPD officers who also confiscated her merchandise on Monday.
The vendor, a 61-year-old woman who moved to the city from Ecuador more than two decades ago, is now trying to figure out how she can get back the jewelry and toys she sells, which she said is worth an estimated $4,000.
“I feel frustration from the merchandise they take away, and the risk of not getting it back,” she told THE CITY in Spanish. “I want to pay for my ticket so I can get my merchandise back as soon as possible.”
But she will probably have to wait for at least another 10 days, she said, as officials had told her that her confiscated goods had not yet been registered. She’s not sure how long the process will take, she said, but plans on getting back out on the street in the meantime with the remaining goods in her home.
“I just have to keep working.”
Tough Math
Local Councilmember Francisco Moya (D), who condemned unlicensed vending on Roosevelt Avenue after Monday’s sweep, said in a statement Thursday that he’s “going to speak up for the PTA moms, immigrant run small businesses, everyday homeowners and tenants coming to me for help.”
“There are a multitude of regulations on vending in the city of New York beyond licensing. I have repeatedly stated my support for increasing the number of permits, but I will not support the unsanitary food sales under open subway staircases, sales of counterfeit goods, or the sale of stolen goods we see on our streets today,” Moya said.
Moya has not signed on to the City Council bill that would increase the number of food and merchandise for the next five years and lift the cap altogether after that.
Part of the reason street vendors in the area have been so frustrated by this week’s raids, Kaufman-Gutierrez said, is because Moya had told Telemundo in Spanish on Monday that “they have to apply for a license to vend.”
When Harlem street vendor Calvin Baker attempted to apply for a general merchandise license Thursday morning at DCWP, however, Deputy Commissioner for Licensing Alba Pico informed him that he could only qualify if he were a military veteran, or if he were to be called from the general merchandise waitlist, which currently lists 11,926 people in queue.
Pico added: “The math indicates that it’s going to take many years unless the law changes.”