As enforcement spikes, Council considers lifting cap on street vendor licenses

With the enforcement of street vendors intensifying in recent years even as the number of permits and licenses available has barely increased, some in the City Council are weighing legislation that would lift the cap on the permits for five years before permanently abolishing it.

About 23,000 mobile street vendors are on a waitlist for food and general merchandise licenses. To address a decades-old law that capped the number of food-vendor licenses at 5,100 and those for general-merchandise vendors at 850, the Council in 2021 passed legislation that increased the number of food vendor permits by 445 annually for 10 years.