Merchants Try to Put Heat on Rising Tide of Illegal Vendors

Traffic at the Tresierras Market on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima is typically brisk on afternoons and weekends. The parking lot behind the store attracts a steady flow of cars, and an equally steady supply of shoppers.

Unfortunately for the market, not everyone in the parking lot comes to shop inside. Instead, some do business with vendors who sell food out of cars and trucks near the entrance to the lot or the gas pumps of a mini-market across the street.

The vendors, almost always operating illegally, sell vegetables, clothing, cheap ceramics and sometimes cooked food. On Friday, for instance, an elderly woman sold corn on the cob from a bucket in a shopping cart, while a man across the street dealt bootleg music tapes--apparently copies, lacking record company labels--out of the back of his pickup truck.

Another man sold bags of oranges. Yet another offered potted plants.

‘Very Frustrating’

“This is very frustrating,” said Jose Gutierrez, a manager at Tresierras Market. “We should not have to compete like this. We try to chase these people away, but they always come back later. Maybe there is nothing we can do.”

The exasperation expressed by Gutierrez is shared and appears to be increasing in communities in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, including Pacoima, San Fernando, Sylmar, Sun Valley and Sunland-Tujunga. To many business managers, the number of illegal vendors working these communities appears to be increasing, at the expense of merchants who follow the regulations.

Chambers of commerce in the northeastern communities, reacting to increasing complaints, recently launched a campaign to crack down on illegal vendors, said Mel Wilson, president of the Pacoima Chamber of Commerce. In notices sent last week, Wilson urged members of those chambers to begin systematically reporting vendors to the police, health authorities and the city Department of Building and Safety.

Fixtures on the Streets

Illegal vendors, local business managers said, have gradually made themselves fixtures on the streets of northeastern communities, operating from vehicles ranging from vans to bicycles and selling merchandise that covers the spectrum from animals to luggage. They often are found near grocery stores and at busy intersections.

Not all street vendors are illegal in Los Angeles, where street sales are governed by a maze of regulations administered by the city clerk’s office, and police, health services, traffic and building and safety departments.

The regulations, however, do not allow the street sale of food, except in certain cases by permission of city health authorities. The regulations do not allow vendors to do business out of a truck outside a grocery store, or a van in the corner of an empty parking lot. It is illegal to sell without collecting a sales tax, and illegal to sell on an empty lot unless the property owner has a zoning permit from the building department.

“Those are the things that are hurting us,” Wilson said, “and lately at our meetings we have heard that it’s getting worse.”

Empty Lots, No Taxes

The notices also urge landowners to stop leasing space to vendors, and to check for illegal merchandise.

For the most part, Wilson said, the notification campaign is directed at two kinds of unauthorized vendors.

The first kind are those who set up shop in empty lots or abandoned gas stations. Although some pay rent, many pay no taxes, established merchants say.

“We see more and more of that every day,” said Bill Watson, a Sylmar plumbing contractor and president of the Sylmar Chamber of Commerce. “If I’m a retailer, I pay for property tax, sales tax, permits, health codes and all kinds of other things. Then how do I feel when somebody pulls up in a truck and undersells me?”

Food Sales

The second concern involves the illegal sale of food. Increasingly, grocery-store owners and managers in the area have complained about vendors who position themselves near the entrance to a market, where they offer a variety of low-priced fruits and vegetables. At the Tresierras Market on Van Nuys Boulevard, for instance, there are sometimes as many as a half-dozen of these salesmen at work on weekends and afternoons, Gutierrez said.

“They undersell us with cheese, tomatoes, corn, things like that,” he said. “But we don’t know where this food comes from. We don’t know if it’s healthy.”

Wilson admits that problems related to illegal vendors are hardly new to Los Angeles in general, or the Valley in particular. In August, 1982, the Department of Building and Safety cracked down on vendors in Van Nuys and North Hollywood at the request of City Councilman Hal Bernson. That drive, which also resulted from an increase in complaints from local business leaders, led to about 50 citations for illegal sales on empty lots, said Mike Lee, a spokesman for the department.

Warnings First

Lee said building inspectors worked closely with representatives of Bernson’s office during the drive, issuing warnings at first, then citing those who ignored the request to leave. The citations, which Lee likened to traffic tickets, carry fines of $85 for a first offense, $170 for a second violation and $255 for a third.

But Wilson said the drive did little to squelch vendors in the northeastern Valley. In recent summers, he said, the illegal traffic has grown increasingly heavy.

Wilson’s campaign is being closely followed by representatives of City Councilman Howard Finn, whose district includes many of the affected communities. David Mays, Finn’s Sylmar field deputy, said he and other staff members regularly pass reports of violations to city enforcement agencies.

Stifling illegal vendors seems sure to be an uphill struggle, partly because of enforcement problems. Lee said only two inspectors handle zoning complaints from the Valley on a full-time basis. Los Angeles Police Sgt. Jim Waters said complaints involving vendors are not considered “a high-priority thing.”

“We investigate, but a lot of times these people are gone when we arrive,” he said. “Generally speaking, what we end up doing is chasing them around.”