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Hot dog crackdown

Street vendors say they’re under attack

(Published June 22, 1998)

By REBECCA CHARRY

Staff Writer

Hot dog? Necktie? Incense? Phone card? Whatever you need, you can probably find it for sale on the sidewalks of Washington. Call it micro-business.

The capital of capitalism has always been ambivalent about street vendors. Now those on the bottom rung of the entrepreneurial ladder say they are about to get kicked off.

D.C. vendors got a temporary reprieve this month when the D.C. control board suspended D.C. City Council legislation calling for an end to new vending licenses and severe limits on vendor locations. On the heels of several independent studies and conflicting calls for vendor regulation reform, changes in D.C. vending law seem inevitable.

Indoor, so-called "fixed location" merchants who pay rent have long complained that street vendors are unfair competition and have urged city officials to prohibit them from selling merchandise similar to that in nearby stores.

Existing regulations require vendors to leave a 12-foot passageway for pedestrians and to steer clear of building entrances, mailboxes, curbs, bus stops and each other. Regulation of street vending involves the police, the health department and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. Vending regulations fill 40 pages of city books.

While the number of street vendors in the city has actually decreased significantly in recent years, some say more control is needed.

"The gut issue is that there has got to be some order," said D.C. Chamber of Commerce President Scott Bolden, "or these vendors will overrun the more established businesses."

D.C. vendors, a majority of whom are immigrants and women, say they are under attack by the Metropolitan Police Department, big business and politicians.

Recent legislation drawn up by Councilman Harold Brazil, D-At Large, and supported by the D.C. Chamber would have halted the sale of new vending licenses and instituted a lottery system to assign permanent two-year sites to vendors at random. The legislation also instituted a limit of three vendors per block and allowed city officials to decide what type of food or merchandise could be sold on each block.

At a hearing last month before the D.C. control board, vendors said such a system would destroy their livelihood.

Vendors say they too are "fixed-location" merchants, even though they pack up at night. Many have been selling to an established clientele in the same location for years.

And while the DCRA’s official position on vendor location is "first come, first serve," vendors say they don’t need city officials telling them where to work.

Bolden claims vendors have become violent with each other over spaces, but the vendors say such confrontations are rare.

"Vendors pretty much respect each other," said Ted Walker, president of D.C. Vendors United. "Everybody knows whose spot is whose."

Another problem with random assignments is that not all locations are appropriate for all merchandise. An incense vendor will go broke if he has to sell near downtown offices, where people want hot dogs, and flower vendors want to be near the Metro to catch people on the way home, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney representing the vendors. Jewelry or craft vendors say they need to be free to move every few months, once they have saturated a particular area.

Other vendors work in husband-wife teams, helping each other set up and unload heavy items. If they were assigned to disparate locations, they couldn’t do their jobs. Still other vendors set up near their children’s day care centers or near relatives’ offices so they can get a ride home.

The number of street vendors in the District has declined from about 2,700 several years ago to 1,219 in 1996, in part because of the introduction of a $1,500 fee in lieu of sales tax introduced in 1995, according to the consulting firm of Holland & Knight.

Even as the number of vendors falls, relations between vendors and the police have deteriorated, said Jerome Gray, former MPD vending coordinator.

"Things are much worse than they used to be," he said. "The rapport with the vendors is not there. There is a lack of training for the officers and a lack of communication. A lot of things could be resolved if they would sit down and discuss it."

Discretion in ticketing is long gone, he said.

If vendors close the stand for 10 minutes to go to the bathroom, they get ticketed for storing the stand on public property. But if they leave a friend or family member in charge while they’re gone, they get ticketed for having a non-licensed person operating the stand. Family members watching stands have sometimes temporarily been arrested.

Vendors, much like city car owners, say ticketing by police is out of control.

But for vendors, each ticket is $50 and, unlike parking tickets, carries criminal, not civil, penalties. Vendors across the city report getting tickets for placing cardboard boxes on the roof of their cart or on the ground, for forgetting their license at home, or for setting out a trash can next to their stand.

If they want to protest the ticket, they have to take a day off from work. Most say it’s cheaper to pay the tickets.

City regulations require that any vendor with 15 or more tickets have his license suspended. Although 15 sounds like a lot, Hilliard said, they pile up fast, especially when police issue them four or five at a time.

Vendors say ticketing is capricious and vindictive, designed not to keep them in line, but to drive them out of business.

"D.C. police used to have a vending unit," Walker said. "They knew the vendors. If there was a squabble over a spot, the police knew whose spot it was and they didn’t let anyone come and create a problem with a vendor who had been here for years. Now instead of listening, most of the officers treat you like a criminal."

When city vendors heard about the provisions of Brazil’s omnibus bill, many started looking for other jobs.

That, say some, is exactly what big business wanted.

But the D.C. control board ordered the city May 28 to suspend plans for the lottery. The control board also ordered the DCRA to restructure the fee in lieu of sales tax to more closely reflect vendor income and to reconsider the vending ban around MCI Center.

"Street vending is one of a number of small business enterprises that the District should encourage," the board wrote. "In addition to offering an entry point for small businesses with low capital requirements, street vendors can benefit consumers by offering goods at lower prices and convenient locations. They can also bring a sense of vitality and diversity to the city."

Regular customers say nothing beats the price.

"I want a $2 meal," said Charles Wattles, who buys lunch nearly every day from Eza Mebrahtu at 19th and K Streets NW. "You can’t get that anywhere else."

He also likes to buy lunch from someone who knows his name.

"I’ve known her for years," he said. "She really adds something to this corner."

When another vendor put up a stand around the corner from her one day last month, he returned the next day to find a new park bench bolted to that spot. The management of the adjacent building, which was persuaded to stop harassing Mebrahtu only by a petition from her regular customers, did not want another vendor there.

The two nearby vendors who witnessed that incident say such tactics are common, even though the sidewalks are public space controlled by the city, not by adjacent businesses. They say the concrete planters and park benches outside shiny downtown office buildings aren’t just put there to beautify the sidewalk, but also to keep vendors out.

"I look at vendors as small business people," said Gray, who retired from the MPD in 1994 after 10 years in vending enforcement. "A lot of them are very well educated and they want to work for themselves. It’s free enterprise."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator