Community Well-Being: Helping Street Vendors in Queens

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Brian Lehrer. Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now for this beginning of Thanksgiving week, we will start a 10-part end-of-year gratitude series. You can think of this as 10 heroes of community well-being in the year 2020. We're bringing on 10 individuals, or leaders of community groups who may not get covered in the news very much, but who have helped to make life livable in this year of so much grief, and so much need, and so much thirsting for justice and equality.

I'll say in advance that these are not the 10 heroes of community well-being this year. There are tens of thousands just in our listening area to be sure, but these are 10 who've been brought to our attention by colleagues, and sources, and friends and you on the phones, and so we will tell 10 community well-being stories for the end of 2020, as representative of how all kinds of people have stepped up this year under these extreme conditions.

We will also have a live Zoom event on Wednesday night, December 9th, to honor three champions of community well-being. The station is generously calling this the Lehrer Award for Community Well-being. We'll tell you more about that event as it gets closer.

Our first guest, in just a minute, will be Mohamed Attia, Director of the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center, here in New York City, and here's why. A few weeks ago, we got this call on the show from a listener named Leticia, in Corona, Queens.

Leticia: Hi, my name is Leticia. Thank you so much for having me. I was calling to shout out the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center. My mom is a street vendor on Roosevelt Avenue, in Corona in Queens, and she's undocumented, and she and all of the vendors in the neighborhood, honestly, they didn't get any support from anybody, except from the Street Vendor Project because they started a GoFundMe and they helped her with some emergency income.

They helped her apply for some grants because she couldn't get anything from the city, or from the Federal loans, because of her immigration status. They hired her to make meals, to do food distribution in the neighborhood with Senator Ramos, and that was the first income she got in almost four months when she did it.

Brain: Wow.

Leticia: Yes, I just wanted to shout them out for stepping up, and making sure that our family wasn't alone through all of this, and for all of the street vendors who've been really struggling.

Brian: Leticia in Corona, shouting out the Street Vendor Project. With me now is Mohamed Attia, Director of the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center. Mohamed, it's great to have you on WNYC today, and thanks for the work your group has been doing this year that inspired that listener phone call.

Mohamed Attia: Sure. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here with you on the show.

Brian: I know it's random, but do you happen to know Leticia and her mother and their particular story?

Mohamed: Sure.

Brian: She said that the project hired her mom, so it sounds like you know who that is.

Mohamed: Sure thing. Yes, we do know Leticia and her mom, and we know all the vendors who benefited from this program. That was literally the lifeline for those people during the past, I'd say, seven months. Because a lot of people as you know, Brian, stopped working completely once the pandemic hit, and people didn't have any income. We do know those individuals and we know every one of them, and we know their stories, and we know how devastating the situation has been for them in the past six months.

Brian: Do you want to elaborate on her story at all, or put Leticia and her family into a bigger context of what's happening with street vendors in the year of COVID?

Mohamed: Sure thing. It all started when the pandemic hit in mid-March, and we started receiving all these calls from our members about what the hell is going on? What's happening in the city? Where are all the people?

A lot of people have stopped working completely. People have seen really significant loss in their daily sales, up to 80% and 90%, so people stopped working because they couldn't survive and run their business on only a 10% of their daily sales.

A lot of people have stopped, there was no income. A lot of people were waiting for support from the government. We have seen some programs from the SBS that, sadly, street vendors didn't qualify for. For a number of reasons, of course, like immigration status, the way they run their business, the requirements and criteria that the city will ask small businesses to provide for them to qualify for such programs.

Then has been the situation for a lot of street vendors across the city. Whether they sell it from a fancy food truck, a smaller pushcart, or the tiny shopping cart that people use to run their business in many places. We all know that street vendors come from communities that have been impacted the hardest ever during COVID crisis.

It has been such a really devastating situation for thousands of street vendors out there, and that has been the case for many months, and till this program started. We really have to look at the history. Wow, it feels like history now, it's only like 6 months ago, back in May, when we received this call from State Senator, Jessica Ramos, who was able to secure funding to run the food distribution program in her district.

She contacted us and she said, "I really want to help street vendors in my district. I really want to help the food vendors," because she would walk in the street and not find the dozens of vendors she sees everywhere. This is how it all started at the very beginning, we were able to partner with her for many weeks. I think starting May all the way to the end of July, we were able to do this every week. Supporting the vendors, have the vendors make some income and some profit, to just stay sustainable and cover their expenses while also provide the community that needs a lot of free food, because we have seen that many communities have been experiencing food insecurities.

Again, when we get to Leticia's mom situation, that was really interesting that on the heels of this program, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation reached out to us, and they were really interested in creating the vendor-powered food distribution. Which was super exciting program, something that lasted seven weeks long in two different boroughs in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

We were able to help 26 food vendors, we employed them to provide those meals. We were able to distribute about 8,000 meals in 14 different events in these two boroughs. That was super interesting opportunity because, as I said, a lot of people didn't have any income, especially for immigration status reasons, they didn't qualify for any financial support from all levels of government, so literally, that was the only income they received. I remember that Leticia told me that when her mom got this opportunity she was able to pay the electricity bill and the water bill because she was behind for like six months or so.

Brain: It's those kinds of basics that aren't even being met for too many people this year. What a great story of matching one group of people's need and another group of people's need, that is the need for work and the need for food, and coming together with various funding sources that you've described to be able to keep street vendors eating, and keep the people who they're delivering food to eating.

It is a wonderful story and that's why we're so happy to feature you in our series on community well-being in 2020, and why we were so happy that Leticia called in that day and put you on our radar because I hadn't known about this particular project.

Listeners, we have a few minutes for phone calls, with Mohamed Attia from the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center. Any street vendors listening right now, who want to tell your stories of surviving economically, or working in this program, or anything else that's related in this year of COVID-19, or anybody who wants to thank the Street Vendor Project yourself for contributing to street vendor and hungry residents of New York City's community well-being in 2020? 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

I actually had the thought early on, and I guess it turned out to be incredibly wrong, that there could be an upside for some street vendors. Maybe it's true for some in certain locations this year, because many people don't want to go shopping indoors if they can avoid it right now, and street vendors of various kinds might feel like a safer option. Have you been seeing any of that?

Mohamed: Totally, and yes. Now, I think a lot of people are seeing street food and the street life a lot safer than the indoors. That's why we have seen the restaurants benefiting from the outdoor dining plan, and yes, it has been, I would say, significantly better for some folks, but in very few locations. Generally speaking now, all vendors are suffering from really huge loss in their daily sales. That's what I'd say.

Yes, now people are thinking differently about the food business and the food scene in the streets of New York City and how things are not getting to be indoors anytime soon, sadly.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Chris, in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris?

Chris: Hi, good morning, Brian and Mohamed. I'm on the board of directors of Sure We Can, it's an organization in Brooklyn that advocates for informal recyclers who collect cans and bottles. I just want to say personal protective equipment usage is very high among recyclers who are doing some very essential work keeping the environment clean. The city's testing trace program has been very, very helpful providing low-income New Yorkers who cannot afford masks or other PPE. I'm wondering do street vendors have access to PPE as well?

Mohamed: Yes, thanks for the question, Chris. That's a good one. Actually, we had received a number of donations like PPE donations from other organizations lately from the city. We are now in the process of distributing them. We have done several outreaches in the past seven months once we receive some PPE equipment, especially masks because we have seen a lot of people need them and sometimes they couldn't afford them.

At some time, we have seen the prices getting really high in the market, and vendors couldn't really afford that, so we would do an in-person outreach to neighborhoods where a lot of street vendors operate there and we will distribute them to our members and to people we meet in the street. We are doing the same pretty much coming up next week right after the holidays. We just received 5,000 masks from the city and we will also work on distributing those.

Brian: That's great. Chris, I'm glad you asked that question. Mohamed, do you want to tell people about the Street Vendor Project, in general? We're clinging on you for your direct service work for families like our caller Leticia, but I know you're also an advocacy group with political positions that not everybody has to agree with, so give us the scope of the group's work around helping people individually and advocating for them politically?

Mohamed: Sure. That's a good question, Brian, and that's right. Street Vendor Project is a member-led organization. It was found back in 2001, and now for 19 years, the main scope of our work has been organizing and advocating for street vendors.

We are defending street vendors' rights, we are also working on expanding their rights. We have seen that during the past decades that street vendors have been really targeted by city policies, by legislations, and the city council that comes really against their interest and makes their livelihood a lot harder than it is already. That is something that we focus on besides all the individual services like legal services, individual services with business opportunities, like those programs.

Also, the cash assistance, like during COVID, we have seen that there was a big opportunity for a lot of people to support their fellow New Yorkers, their street vendors, the people that live and work in their neighborhoods, and we were able to raise a good amount of money and we were able to distribute that cash to our members across the city.

We reached out more than 800 vendors and households within our street vendor COVID-19 emergency fund, also within our partnership with the Mayor Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Open Society Foundation for the Undocumented New Yorkers Fund.

There's a lot that we do, but yes, I do agree with you, the main thing is the political views. The main thing is advocacy, and we are advocating for street vendors to have the right to operate their business legally because we are dealing with a very outdated, sadly, outdated vending system that street vendors are dealing with now, where people cannot get a permit or a license from the city to operate legally, so they have to deal with the underground market that everyone under the sun is aware of.

A lot of people have to work without permits, and that is something that we have brought to the attention of the mayor and the City Council several, several times over the past seven years now. We have heard many promises, Brian, honestly. From the mayor sides especially we have heard several promises in the past three years that the mayor is working with the City Council to get this legislation done to increase the number of permits, not to increase the number of vendors, and that is a misconception that I always like to clarify.

We are not interested in helping other people becoming vendors as we are interested in helping those people who are working out there making a living to work in a legal way, and come out of the shade, come out of the informal economy and legalize their work, so the city can benefit and the whole community can benefit. That is a really good opportunity for people to hear about it and learn.

If you really want to learn more about our work, please visit our website, it's streetvendor.org. Follow us on social media, we are Street Vendor Project on Facebook and Instagram. On Twitter, we are @VendorPower.

Brian: I think we have a caller on the illegal street vendor license market. Carolyn in the East Village. Carolyn, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Carolyn: Hi, Brian. No, I was just going to ask your guest to address the different challenges that I know street vendors face, and he actually just did, but I did hear there's an illegal market and sometimes vendors get arrested and is really hard to get a permit. There's just so many challenges for them, but he did just basically address some of this. Thanks, Brian. Thank you so much.

Brian: Thank you very much.

Carolyn: I love you.

Brian: On the political side, Mohamed, as a news organization, we don't endorse or oppose your political positions. We're thanking you here for your direct service work that we discussed in the beginning of the segment, but this push for New York City Council to expand the number of street vendor permits, you say that that wouldn't expand the number of street vendors.

Explain that because I think pushback against your advocacy on this comes partly from the brick-and-mortar stores of the city, those business owners pay rent and have other expenses that come with indoor space, and they don't always like street vendors being able to set up, to compete with them right outside their doors on the public streets.

I guess so far they've won the political argument since the number of street vendor permits hasn't gone up in many years. How would you push back against that argument? Explain how the number of permits could go up without the number of vendors going up, because I hadn't heard that before?

Mohamed: Yes, great. A couple of points here, Brian. One is there is this narrative out there that vendors compete unfairly with the brick-and-mortar and with restaurants. I believe, personally, that this is a false narrative that people have been pushing for because, one, there is no study whatsoever provide this argument that vendors compete with the brick-and-mortar.

It is only a word of mouth of some people who represent some businesses. We all know that vendors provide very different services, very different products at very different price point. I think all of us are consumers and we always have a price point for products. There is no way that the coffee cart that sell a cup of coffee for 75 cents is competing with Dunkin' Donuts who sell a cup of coffee for $3 or Starbucks who sell Frappuccino for $5. That is really nonsense situation.

That's one. Two, also, a lot of people think that street vendors don't have overhead, which is also false. Yes, they don't pay tens of thousands of dollars in rent in a brick-and-mortar store, but they also have a lot of expenses. They pay rent for the commissaries where they park, that's a monthly rent, they pay for utilities, the propane, the gasoline, the drivers that take it back and forth.

Brian: 15 seconds left.

Mohamed: Great. Just to go straight to the point of adding more permits will actually legalize the existing vendors out there. A lot of people out there selling without permits, we want to legalize their work. We don't want them to stay working without permits. Also, the same thing with the underground market vendors.

Brian: That political debate goes on in City Council. We thank Mohamed Attia, Director of the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center, particularly for your direct service work that inspired the call from our listener Leticia a few weeks ago and for matching the need of street vendors to be able to still make some money with the need of so many hungry people out there in New York today. Thank you for your contribution to community well-being in 2020.

Mohamed: Thank you, Brian. Thanks for having me.

 

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