Street Vendors Finding It Harder to Ply Their Wares

Street vendors in the Southeast area are finding it increasingly difficult to sell their wares because of tougher city ordinances and police crackdowns.

Bellflower passed an ordinance June 11 that bars all street vending, after a sharp increase in the city of door-to-door pillow salesmen and Popsicle hawkers on bicycles. There are exceptions to the ordinance for licensed catering trucks.

“It was very important to limit the street sellers,” said Mike Egan, assistant city administrator. “The reason we took these steps is because they were coming in from all around. Somehow the word had gotten out that they could come in here and sell out of their carts, and there was a concern about health problems.”

Code enforcement officials warn a vendor to get out of town the first time spotted and cite the vendor the second time, he said.

On Aug. 27, South Gate passed an ordinance that prohibits street vending from non-motorized vehicles. The city’s 47 licensed truck vendors are exempt.

The City Council cited unclean food handling and children running into streets to buy Popsicles as reasons to quickly pass the urgency ordinance.

“I understand people are trying to make a buck, but there are health and safety considerations,” Chief of Police Ron George said.

During three weeks in August, South Gate police impounded 31 pushcarts and issued citations, said Lt. Michael Blaska, watch commander. The carts are picked up by the city’s contract towing service.

“We usually bring in about three a week,” said Sharon Shipe, dispatcher for Walt’s Tow Service. “They’re usually empty because the vendor takes his goods out of the cart or the cop will give the snow cones to the kids on the block.”

Although vendors see selling on the streets as a way to survive, most city officials see them as a nuisance and are passing ordinances to outlaw the use of public streets for selling anything.

Long Beach, Norwalk, Cerritos, Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens, Downey, Pico Rivera and Signal Hill for years have had ordinances forbidding the use of public streets by hawkers.

In most cities that have prohibited street vending, the vendor will be cited and, if convicted, subject to a fine of up to $500 or a six-month jail term. The typical punishment is a fine of $100 to $200.

Whittier allows street vending, provided the seller has a city-issued business license. The vendor, who is usually directed to the business license offices by police officers, must pay a $30 fee for fingerprinting and photos. If the vendor has no criminal record, he can pay $50 more and be issued an annual business license, said Bob Lyons, business license officer.

Whittier has 10 to 12 licensed vendors, he said.

Some street vendors are not aware of the laws because they have recently arrived from other countries.

“Most of these vendors come directly from San Salvador and Ecuador and are caught completely off guard when we issue them a citation and confiscate their carts,” Montebello Police Chief Steve Simonian said.

Montebello passed an ordinance a year ago to allow the city to confiscate carts and their contents. Carts are confiscated daily by the patrol division and code enforcement officers.

“We’re violated every day by street vendors,” Simonian said. “Most of them are undocumented aliens. I think most of them know it’s illegal to be peddling, but for many of them, it’s the only way they have to make money. The instinct for survival is very strong.”

Many understand the risks and are constantly changing locations, setting up for a few hours, then moving on.

“I make $20 to $40 a day, barely enough for food and rent,” said Ricardo Guiroz Franco, a native of Mexico. He paid a coyote, a transporter of illegal aliens, $300 to bring him safely across the Mexican-American border five months ago. The owner of the cart lets him sleep on the floor of his home. Guiroz Franco sends what money he can home to his parents.

“Street selling is a way of life in Mexico,” said Benjamin Bernard, a Bell Gardens resident originally from Mexico City. “It’s normal there; no problem for the seller, no problem for anybody.”

At the corner of Florence and Pacific avenues in Huntington Park, Jaan Zanches, formerly of Jalisco, Mexico, does a brisk seasonal business selling carved mangoes from an improvised stand made from three plastic milk crates.

A few feet away, Jorge Torrez sells Spanish cassette tapes laid out on a sheet, hidden from the street by a parked car.

“It’s the only work I can find,” he said. “I make a little money to pay the rent and buy some food.”

Torrez, who walked across the Mexican-American border with friends, has been in this country for five months.

In early September, the Latino Chamber of Commerce asked Compton to allow shop owners to display goods on private property. The proposal was turned down, partly because, council members said, if they allowed outside displays, they would be inviting the street vendors back.

“In essence, we don’t have that problem,” Police Cmdr. Ramon Allen said about vendors. “We used a special enforcement team to run the street vendors out into the unincorporated Los Angeles County zones a year or so ago.”

In Huntington Park, the crackdown took another form: In June the city confiscated 32 coconuts, 85 watermelons, 120 mangoes, 743 bags of pork rinds, 8 bags of oranges, 53 churros and 72 bags of spiced fruit from street vendors who could not produce a driver’s license or California identification card. If a vendor can provide acceptable identification, he is issued a citation, with no confiscation.

Asked what they did with all the confiscated goods, Rudy Munoz, Huntington Park’s assistant redevelopment director said: “The food goes bad, and we have to dispose of it.”