Then you’d have a lot of the same issues. Cause these vendors would still lack access to certified prep kitchens or the funds to turn their home kitchens into one. There’s a serious lack of affordable prep kitchens in a lot of lower income neighborhoods in NYC. And you’re not right with licensing if you aren’t using one.
So you need to build out low cost, or free prep kitchens or incubators.
You’d still have property owners, stationary businesses and other (usually licensed) vendors forcing them out of the highest traffic, best locations. Unless enforcement swapped to prevent that. Rather than helping to force them out.
There would still be language barriers, and biases to get over. Churro and tamale vendors tend not to get approved, the trendy meatball sub truck from the start up guy does. So you gotta attack that problem.
It’s a hell of a lot more complicated than just licensing. And lot of these problems also impact licensed vendors. Particularly the lack of access and expense of prep and storage facilities. As a result a lot of the permits are actually owned by prep facilities (often really far from where the vendor’s location will be or where they live). And the people running your Halal or hotdog cart are often paying a very high fee to lease the cart on a by day basis. Or is an “independent contractor” working for a cart brand.
It’s a lot like cab medallions before reform.
The bigger issue with Yang’s comment is how it’s framed.
“Under enforcement” is kinda rich given how this goes. That Churro lady people where tweeting at him apparently at one point owed more in fines and court fees than the average New Yorker makes in a year. She was apparently facing up to 10 years in jail if she couldn’t keep up.
And selling churros was the only thing she had. So apparently she’d get arrested, see hundreds spent on food and her cart destroyed. Spend a weekend in jail. Then spend hours on public transit getting home, hours more getting churros from a bakery, and putting shit back together. Then head back to the subway to get to a busy enough station to make enough to cover what just happened.
Then get arrested again.
Doesn’t sound like under enforcement is the issue to a lot of people. In fact the current under enforcement complaints roll out of restricting enforcement to mitigate that absolute shit show.
Even worse to cite it as an example of how we should do more for rent paying businesses. When the local book store goes under nobody goes to debtor’s prison.
Most of the unlicensed vendors in question are single people selling single items. Often out of coolers and granny carts.
Since licensed vendors will often physically harm them, or steal and destroy their shit to keep them out of usual high traffic areas, and their brownness means they’ll get stopped by the cops, they tend to stay mobile.
They work the subway trains, stations and parks. Usually in places where vending is not allowed.
They tend not to post up in a single regular spot. But move through a given area or neighborhood. A lot of them serve minority or immigrant communities in outer boroughs neighborhoods where there aren’t many “approved” spots for a food vendor. Or selling ethnic items unlikely to be served at licensed vendors (or unlikely to get licensed in the first place).
Tamales, soups, grilled corn, sliced fruit, agua fresca and sorrel drinks, baked goods, empanadas or beef patties, dumplings of various kinds, etc. Often stuff that can be made ahead in volume and kept warm or served cold. Some roll with grills though, like the corn guys sometimes do.
So they’re really easy to recognize and usually well known in the areas they work over. Which lets police repeatedly target the same people over and over.
And in practice suspected illegal street vending becomes one more excuse for a stop and frisk. Under Trump, ICE liked to use it to dig into people’s immigration status.
Those hotdog vendors were popular in various Canadian cities for a while(I used to get them in Toronto and Calgary), usually unlicensed IIRC. The fun came gradually to an end because people were always getting burned by the hot BBQ’s (they were usually low end backyard units, and guys were always fighting around them when they were in club districts.)
