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History of the Movement

The LA Street Vendor Campaign was an effort centered on the legalization of street vending in the city of Los Angeles. Its origins come from Boyle Heights all the way back to 2008 when police officers repeatedly gave tickets to a family participating in street vending. This resulted in multiple city leaders attempting to draw attention to the issue and support the family’s efforts. A couple years later in 2010, the East LA Community Corporation held its first public forum to discuss street vending and how best to draw support for its legalization. This eventually led to the official formation of the LA Street Vending Campaign in the year 2012. The campaign rapidly grew in popularity, quickly gaining supporters and even drawing support from organizations such as the LA Food Policy Council, Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA), Little Tokyo Service Center, etc. The group envisioned a citywide permit system that allowed vendors to legally sell their products on the streets. Only one year later, the campaign took their initiative directly to City Council to call for the legalization of street vending in an effort to provide legal protection for the citizens of LA.

Legalization of Street Vending

Three years later,  the LA City Council released the November 22, 2016 Letter and Proposed Sidewalk Vending Policy Framework. The LA Street Vendors Campaign seemed to be generally appeased, however the organization still maintained a few reservations about the framework and were given an opportunity to provide input on what they wished to change.

The first point of issue revolved around the comprehensiveness of the Council’s suggested program. Initially, the framework called for a maximum of two vendors per block on all streets. However, the campaign found that economically insufficient as their argument centered around how many of LA’s streets were large enough to support much more than two vendors. They followed this up by stating how placing a two vendor cap on all streets would only limit business since many vendors would still be left without an opportunity to sell their wares. Instead, the amount of vendors on each street should depend on the street’s location, independent of the limit on other streets.

The next issue the initiative found in the proposed framework was that vendors had to obtain permission from adjacent businesses. The organization felt that forcing vendors to obtain permission would only limit productivity. They also argued that this was an overall difficult policy to enforce that put unnecessary strain on the vendors. Instead, the campaign suggested that each vendor should be allowed to sell their products without having to obtain permission, however local businesses would be able to find protection from the other health and safety regulations already provided in the ordinance.

Third, the framework established many different punishments to be enacted should there be a violation of any of the policies set forth in the document. However, the campaign argued that the punishments should be less extreme, calling for a lower number in fines. They also discussed the addition of a warning for first-time offenders in order to allow people a grace period out of fairness, along with a provision that did not allow for the legal confiscation of property. The campaign called the confiscation of property a violation of justice and inconsistent with the idea of humane enforcement.

The last large issue that the campaign called to question was regarding the actual permit application process. They argued that vendors should not be required to divulge information regarding their immigration or citizenship status in an effort to protect those who may not be US citizens. Additionally, the campaign asked that the framework be put into action as soon as possible. They declared that vendors have faced enough hardship and that it was now time for legal action to be taken.

The campaign’s persistence and effort came to fruition as the Council decriminalized street vending in 2017 with street vending actually becoming legalized in 2018 and sidewalk vending formally being regulated as of January 1st, 2019. A permit system was also established the same year.

The Future of Street Vending

The new legalization of street vending brought about much change for the citizens of LA and created many new job opportunities. However, the future of street vending still remains uncertain. On February 14 , 2019, a flower vendor was removed from the corner of Whittier and Soto by a police officer. This, of course, occurred after all of the new policies and regulations regarding street vending had been passed. Despite the legalization of street vending, the permit system, as of now, has not yet been formalized, creating an environment where police officers can still remove vendors since they still do not technically possess official documentation.