Making Way for a Step Up : Street vending offers job opportunities, but it must be regulated

“It’s not ideal, but it does give us an opportunity to try it out in certain areas and iron out the kinks.” That’s how one supporter characterized a City Council compromise that will legalize street vendors in some neighborhoods. We agree.

Los Angeles is the only major U.S. city in which street vending is illegal. But illegal or not, sidewalk trade thrives here. In some parts of the downtown, Pico-Union, Boyle Heights and Westlake sections, one can buy a tremendous range of products, including toys and tapes, clothing and chicharrones. Street selling has historically given many immigrants their first, sometimes tenuous toehold on the American economic ladder, and it continues to do so.

But where some see street vending as an opportunity, many residents, shopkeepers and city officials regard the jumble of pushcarts and sidewalk stands as representative of urban blight, unfair economic competition, lost tax revenue and bad sanitation. On the other hand, some critics of the ban on street vendors have argued that resources devoted to arresting and prosecuting vendors could be better used elsewhere.

Under the City Council’s plan, adopted Tuesday, vendors, merchants and city officials must agree to create special vending districts and determine the locations and number of vending sites in each district. Health department and tax permits will be necessary. In neighborhoods where residents and merchants do not want the sidewalk sellers, those who continue to trade will be subject to penalties.

This plan probably means that vendors will operate legally in those central city neighborhoods where they have predominated but that vending will also continue--illegally--in many other neighborhoods. Perhaps a uniform, citywide rule would have been better. Perhaps that will come, later.