Residents Fear Crime if Vending Is Legalized : Street sales: Groups say allowing peddling will increase blight. City officials say the proposed law would free police for more important tasks.

A proposed ordinance that would legalize and regulate street vending is drawing sharp criticism from homeowner groups in the northeast San Fernando Valley who say the law will increase crime and blight in areas already beset with a multitude of problems.

“We don’t see any benefit street vending can offer a minority community already overwhelmed with drugs,” said Raymond L. Jackson, president of the Northeast Valley Community Improvement Assn. “We don’t want it. We won’t tolerate it. We will fight it to the nth degree.”

At a meeting this week, Jackson and about 70 members of several homeowners groups and others voiced opposition to the proposal. The coalition plans to lobby members of the City Council to oppose the ordinance, which is scheduled to come up for a vote in January.

Street vending is illegal in Los Angeles. Under the ordinance sponsored by Councilman Michael Woo, vendors, who sell anything from fruit to flowers, would apply for permits and be subject to the same standards as other businesses. The permits would specify what vendors could sell and where they could operate.

The proposal would allow some vendors to operate in special vending districts set up by the city. Other vendors would be allowed to sell their wares in any commercially zoned district, with a limit of two per block.

“We need to accept the fact that street vending is part of the practical reality of living in the city, but the city needs to do a better job of regulating it,” Woo said.

“We should be encouraging people who want to work for a living,” Woo said. “These street vendors are at the bottom of the economic scale. They’re trying to be responsible business people.”

The proposal would allow the city to regulate and bring order to street vending, Woo said, and it would allow police officers who now cite street vendors to deal with more serious issues.

But David Mays, chief deputy for Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represents the northeast Valley, said the proposal “would confuse and exaggerate the problems” in some communities.

“A number of communities in the north San Fernando Valley have been negatively affected by illegal and uncontrollable vending,” he said.

Vendors cause congestion, litter, and attract drug dealers and other criminals who “hide” among them, Mays said. “A lot of these people selling are also being victimized. Many of them are juveniles.”

Instead of being individual entrepreneurs trying to survive, vendors are often sponsored by large wholesalers, Mays said.

“It’s often a large company taking advantage of people who should be protected better by the city,” Mays said. Local shop owners “who pay high rents,” often complain that the vendors harm their businesses through unfair competition.”

Representatives of homeowner and community groups voiced similar complaints.

“We’ve observed vendors using the bathroom behind houses and then continuing to sell food,” Jackson said, questioning the cleanliness of street vending operations.

Fred Taylor, who heads Focus 90, a Valley community group, said street vending has had a negative economic effect on Pacoima’s businesses and homeowners.

Street vendors often set up shop in residential areas and decrease property value, he said.

Developers and new business owners bypass the area, opting instead for the nearby city of San Fernando, which recently banned street vending.

“It’s because they don’t have the street vending,” Taylor said. The ordinance, he said, is “not going to relieve the problems that exist; it will expand them.”

Since March, Taylor and others have worked with Los Angeles to deal with problems caused by vending. Based on their concerns, a task force was formed to deal specifically with the problems of vendors, he said.

“We’ve been working really hard out here,” Taylor said. “We’d finally made a dent.”