A Hot Topic on the City’s Sidewalks : Hearing on legalizing L.A. street vending generates passionate arguments, pro and con

Sidewalk vending and the question of whether to legalize it are emotionally charged issues. Last Friday, for example, the two sides in the matter were passionate in arguing their cases at a public hearing on a proposed Los Angeles City Council ordinance that would allow vending in eight special districts around town.

Spokespersons for an African American merchants group and for the Korean American Grocers Assn. complained that sidewalk vendors undercut their businesses. On the other side, Olympia Hernandez of the Street Vendors Assn. declared, “We want to work honestly and with dignity, and we have been waiting for a long time.” The council will vote on the ordinance Wednesday.

Illegal or not, the sidewalk trade thrives here. The ordinance would provide an opportunity to experience legal vending in certain areas on a trial basis. It could be fine-tuned or greatly altered, as circumstances warrant. It represents a chance to turn the current chaos into order, and a chance to generate public income through city and county permits. The council should approve the ordinance.

For vending to be permitted on a block within a vendor district, 20% of the residents and businesses on that block would have to agree; thus, city officials say, some blocks in a district might allow vending while others did not. Individual merchants would also have the right to bar a vendor from setting up shop directly in front of their businesses, even if the vendor was not selling a competing product.

The start-up costs to the newly legal vendors for operating permits, licenses and city-approved equipment would range from $1,332 to $2,643. Still at issue is how enforcement would be accomplished in other L.A. areas--in which vending would remain illegal--not to mention within the special districts themselves. That’s an important consideration in a city where the police have been too busy with serious crime to devote much effort to sidewalk vending.