Vendors Want More Permits, Not Just Green Ones
January 15, 2008
In the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished category, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg came up with a plan to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to low-income New Yorkers, and he got hit with rotten tomatoes from city street vendors.
The mayor’s plan — to provide an extra 1,500 cart permits for vendors willing to sell produce in neighborhoods underserved by grocery stores — has been widely hailed by public health advocates. The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says it will make it easier for an estimated 100,000 residents to buy vegetables.
But today a group of street vendors protested at City Hall, saying the proposal neglects to help the people on the other side of the food cart.
Rafael Samanez, the director of the advocacy group Vamos Unidos, said an extra 1,500 cart permits, under the city’s proposed Green Cart legislation, is far too low for the demand of street vendors. “The city has failed to meet the needs of thousands of low-income workers,” he said.
Mr. Samanez said the scarcity of permits means that even licensed food vendors must work outside the law to earn a living, skirting police enforcement while operating their carts without a license.
“Sometimes they seize our food and throw it into the garbage,” said Alma, a vendor who gave only her first name. She has sold soup from a cart in Manhattan for six years, and said a $2,000 fine for selling food without a cart permit would wipe out three to four months of earnings for her.
Mitchell Duneier, a sociology professor at Princeton University who has written a book on New York street vendors, said while the city should address the greater concerns of street vendors, “I thought it was an extraordinary idea and to the mayor’s credit that he wanted to find ways to bring healthy food to poor neighborhoods.”
Anthony Hogrebe, a spokesman for the City Council, said the purpose of the plan “is to get fresh fruits and vegetables into neighborhoods that lack access to healthy foods.” He said the number of permits for street vendors is a separate and more complex issue “that is an issue the Council would be willing to look at in the future.”
Mr. Samanez’s group said there is a current waiting list of 2,500 people seeking cart permits and estimates another 9,000 vendors are operating without permits. The group said the city has maintained the current limit, of 3,000 food carts and 853 merchandise carts, since 1979.
Jaime Casteneda, another soup vendor, said his father, who recently died, ran a food cart in Manhattan for 10 years.
“Every year, he would apply for a permit,” he said. “He never got one.”
Source: NY Times
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