With a vending ban on Mission Street five days away, Latino vendors held a press conference Wednesday morning, again pleading for a delay until after the New Year.
More than 100 vendors, they said, have formed an association that is getting legal assistance to assess how to fight back and delay the Nov. 27 start date.
“We’re not asking for anything unreasonable,” said Luz Eresma, a vendor who, like others, spoke in Spanish before the crowd on Wednesday morning. “How will we survive if they want us moved elsewhere, or want to take us away from the Mission, which has been our home?”
Eresma said the process by which District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen announced the vending ban last month lacked transparency, and many vendors voiced concerns that the ban could be extended indefinitely.
Santiago Lerma, a spokesperson for Ronen’s office, said that the vending ban would last for 90 days and then be reassessed, but that Monday’s start date would not be delayed.
“It’s almost impossible, just on an average day, for inspectors to walk the corridor because of the amount of vendors out there,” Lerma said. He said the ban was necessary to get control of an “out of control” situation.
The vendors met with Ronen on Friday in a tense exchange, after which she refused to delay the ban.
Last summer, Ronen’s office announced a vendor permit program, which she said would allow city officials to more easily identify and remove vendors selling stolen goods or engaging in other criminal activity. Many vendors signed on and acquired permits. But that process has not done much to change the climate at the neighborhood’s BART plazas. Fencing of stolen goods and open drug use continue, and disputes sometimes escalate to violence.
During the ban, permitted vendors will have access to a space rented by the city at 2137 Mission St. for 30 to 40 vendors that will be open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. A second spot at a parking lot at 24th and Capp streets will house nine vendors, and run Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Anyone else vending in the street come Monday, Lerma said, could be immediately identified and asked to move along by police.
Lerma added that Public Works inspectors would be stationed at both BART plazas, and that two teams would patrol the Mission Street corridor.
He said that, while vendors may feel safe working together, inspectors and residents do not. “The City employees that are getting assaulted are [afraid],” Lerma said. “So we have to work for them, too. We have to work for the brick and mortars. We have to work for the people that can’t ride the bus … because there’s too much chaos.”
How those breaking the rules will be kept away long-term, however, is unclear. Typically, when inspectors leave or turn their backs, people hawking goods flock back to the area. On Tuesday afternoon, a group of DPW workers and police stood on a virtually clean part of the plaza, but on the side of the plaza that fronts 24th Street, vendors sold items from paper bags.
Between 23rd and 25th streets on Mission, at least three different individuals sold items Tuesday afternoon from a paper bag or a small suit case.
Deldelp Medina of the Latinx Democratic Club, who spoke during Wednesday’s press conference, called for a more specific plan on handling the street conditions.
“Just because you don’t have vendors doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to gain safety,” Medina said. “Do not conflate … having a safe system for us to be able to walk around in this area, with a lack of vendors.”
And, most vendors who gathered on Wednesday seemed unwilling to move indoors during the ban — for visibility, and because they say there isn’t space for all of them.
“As a permitted street vendor, we have rights, and they should not be violated by anyone,” said Carlos Escalante, another vendor who spoke on Wednesday morning.
Juanita Valdez held a sign listing “bigger problems than street vendors:” car break-ins, street shit, drug addicts, rent prices. “SF put your energy where it matters. Leave vendors alone,” it read beneath.
Valdez said she supports her two children by selling flowers in the plaza with her husband — she has been selling for nine years in the 24th Street plaza, and sold flowers for some 20 years before that closer to 16th Street.
Asked what she will do if the ban goes into effect on Monday, Valdez, like others who gathered on Wednesday, was unfazed: “I will keep fighting,” she said in Spanish.
SFPD should start citing the people who are buying the obviously stolen property. The customers are just as responsible for this mess as the illegal vendors are.
My issue if with vendors selling stolen goods.
Any vendor reselling potentially shoplifter stolen goods should be banned and their goods seized unless proof of legal acquisition can be provided.
The sale of stolen goods on Mission street has been going on for as long as I can remember, but Ronen and David Compost allowed it to get completely out of control. So here we are.
Because they are the police?
Police are not in charge of enforcing this anymore DPW is. The rules changed a few years back.
My friend can’t get his wheelchair through the Mission/16th street sidewalks.
Take their stolen goods away and get rid of the phony COVID test umbrellas and phony stolen old model cell phone umbrellas.
Arrest the drug dealers and help the drug addicts move along to Bernal Heights. Have lived right near the BART over 30 years and now is the worst it’s been
A plaza should be just that! Normal people should be able to congregate and sit around and enjoy themselves.
The others need to go elsewhere maybe Ronen’s Bernal hood or Pacific Whites, Forest Hills..
the idea is clean out the deliberate containment zone. My friend should be able to safely use his wheelchair as should able bodied like kids, and me and you!!!
These “vendors” create a very seedy environment for the neighborhood and should set up somewhere else
Enough is enough. Residents and store owners are tired of having to navigate through crowded sidewalks full of stolen merchadise, people hanging out panhandling or selling drugs, human feces and urine, needles and sketchy characters who at any time can start a fight and hurt a person walking to the Bart station or the bus stop.
Keep the Mission Street sidewalks clean of merchandise.
I didn’t see those vendors ‘uniting’ to push out the frauds and scammers.
The ban should stay and be expanded.
Sick of these journalists defending criminal behavior. Forget that some of these people are selling stolen merchandise, likely not paying taxes, or undergoing health inspections. It’s all about them and how they’re supposedly being picked on.
Mission Local’s unfortunate first tendency is always against what’s good for San Francisco. It’s perverse.
It comes from the fact that local progressives basically don’t care about the city anymore, and only care about national and international issues. That I understand because a lot of them are 20-somethings who came here because they’re progressive, so they’re just not invested in the city itself.
But Mission Local’s anti-San Francisco stance is continually astounding, because its staff should both know better, and care. I don’t know why they don’t.
So much retail space is suffering, I don’t understand why they need to sell stolen good on the street? Maybe just rent a space for the goods you stole from another retail space?
Do they ALL have resale licenses??Do they collect sales tax??Do they pay income tax??Do they have valid social security numbers??What makes a certain area exempt from these rules??
Clean up the Mission starts with the vendors, selling stolen property, dope & blocking the sidewalk should not be tolerated. Merchants in brick & mortar stores need to be thought about. This is not 3rd world,
Vendors went thru the process and obtained legit permits – played by the rules.
Now The City is pulling out the rug because they will not/can not remove un-permitted “vendors”.
More total dysfunction.
Prediction: the sketchy vendors will still be there – just lighter on their feet.
Legit vendors? Welcome to San Francisco governance Ronen style.
Reminds me of a chicken running around with her head cut off.
Nothing will change. The vendors—legal and illegal—will do exactly what they want. Ronen will wring her hands, cry a bit, and then say that there is nothing she can do. This “ban” coincides with the supervisors’ December vacation, so no one will enforce it — certainly not the cops who Ronen has denounced and defunded. She has run the Mission into the ground, and that is her legacy.
Bring back Feinstein’s Cop Boxes !!
‘Police Kobans’ properly and they range from ten square feet in the middle of an intersection up to complete sub-station.
Dianne’s 24/7/365 stations were about ten feet long and 4 feet wide and you can see one still at the Grant Street Cable Car Turnaround being used as a ticket window.
Eskenazi did an entire piece which you should link.
He found one at Walter Wong’s yard I think.
I’ve been trying to get Daniel Lurie to announce this move as a campaign plank.
Every party here is crying for Safety and absolutely NONE of them expect the SFPD to provide it.
Well, they used to.
At these very BART Plazas.
Go Niners !!
h.
Sounds like the legal weed industry; taxed, over-regulated while the “black” market thrives unabated
Campers,
These intersections need two things they had when Feinstein was Mayor …
1. Police Kobans manned 24/7/365
2. Speakers Platforms like they have for ‘Gold’ and ‘Silver’ men in Union Square
h.
Son unidos ? Pues renten un espacio, son unidos ?, dejen de tirar basura !.
Se dicen vulnerables y cuando alguien pregunta algo son mal educados, agreden a las personas !. Se escudan en el robo
Good day,
Hope everyone had great Thanksgiving.
h.
Am I the only one that actually likes the vendors being around? It adds so much vitality and vibrancy to the neighborhood, and there are so many people selling things besides just stolen goods. I personally frequent many of the food vendors, and I doubt a lot of people would claim that the bean shuckers, tamale ladies, florists, and antique vendors are a nuisance.
I would also argue that the problem of congestion on the sidewalk is largely caused by the metal barricades that are meant to deter vending in the first place, which are placed right where everyone would be walking, and force pedestrians, vendors, and bus riders into narrow conflicting corridors.