Street vendors in Los Angeles will save hundreds in permit fees after the city approved an ordinance that will drastically cut annual permit prices.
The ordinance, passed Friday by the L.A. City Council, reduces the annual vendor permit fee that would have cost $541 to $27.51. The new law will go into effect July 28.
At Friday’s council meeting, Councilmember Nithya Raman, who introduced the ordinance with Councilmember Imelda Padilla and others on the council, said the move marks “the final step in what has been a long road to bring street vendors into the formal economy.”
In January 2020, the city launched its street vending permit program with annual fees of $291. That price was set to increase to $541 after a six-month grace period, but the COVID pandemic stalled this plan.
In February, the council voted to eliminate several “no-vending zones” that existed throughout the city, a win for street vendors who had long lobbied for the change after Los Angeles decriminalized street vending in late 2017. California followed in 2022, when Gov. Gavin Newsom passed SB 972, which created a new retail food designation, allowing some street vendors to apply for public health permits. The law went into effect in January 2023.
Raman and Padilla previously introduced a motion to conduct a fee study that would figure out a new, more affordable permit price. The fee study concluded that the price tag deterred many vendors from obtaining permits. The city estimated there were over 50,000 street vendors and that about 16,000 would apply annually. Only 900 applied for permits and the majority continued to operate without them.
Padilla said that while “the legalization of street vending was a step in the right direction,” the city needed to do more to lower financial barriers to entry for vendors. “Lowering the permitting fee is an important step forward as it will allow them to step out of the shadows and come into the formal system,” Padilla said.
