A longtime advocate for New York City’s street vendors will now represent the small businesses at City Hall. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday officially launched the Office of Street Vendor Services and appointed Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, co-director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, as its first executive director. As part of the Department of Small Business Services, the new office will conduct outreach to the city’s roughly 23,000 street vendors and educate them on local laws and the permitting process. Legislation reforming street vending that passed the City Council last year mandated the creation of the new office.
Kaufman-Gutierrez has spent seven years advocating on behalf of street vendors, conducting outreach to understand their concerns with the city’s policies while keeping them informed about an often complex network of local vending laws, according to Gothamist.
Most recently, she served as co-director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, an advocacy group. She frequently visited vending hot spots, handing out fliers and using tools like measuring tapes to ensure vendors’ stands met size requirements and were positioned at the required distance from driveways and crosswalks to avoid fines and tickets.
“Street vendors have long fought for both recognition and support from city government, and I’m honored to join SBS and the Administration in centering the needs of our city’s smallest businesses at Office of Street Vendor Services,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said.
“Together with street vendors, interagency partners, community-based organizations, and local stakeholders at the table, we can build a more vibrant, and equitable street vending ecosystem across the five boroughs.”
Kaufman-Gutierrez’s new role comes at a time when the city’s street vending system is undergoing significant change. According to the New York Times, while the city has more than 20,000 vendors, there are only 6,880 permits and 853 general vendor licenses, figures that have barely changed since 1979.
Last December, the Council passed a legislative package aimed at cutting through the red tape and bureaucracy that have long hampered the permitting process, measures Kaufman-Gutierrez advocated for during her time at the Street Vendor Project.
One of the bills makes an additional 22,000 supervisory licenses available annually from 2026 through 2031 and creates 10,500 new general vending licenses in 2027.
The Council overrode Adams’ veto of the legislation in January, which he issued on his last day in office.
The legislation also builds on a similar policy passed in July that decriminalized most street vending violations in NYC, removing misdemeanor penalties for general and food vendors and reducing them to civil offenses. Under Adams, officers issued more than 9,300 tickets to vendors in 2024, more than double the total in 2023, as 6sqft previously reported.
Despite the law, The City reported that some street vendors are still receiving criminal summonses for violations, suggesting the NYPD has not fully trained officers on the new policy.
According to the Street Vendor Project, seven summonses were issued to five vendors in Manhattan and Brooklyn for violations including failing to display a license or food prices and operating too close to a bus stop, curb, or hydrant—all of which should be treated as civil offenses under the new law.
In a statement to The City, an NYPD spokesperson said the department is “continuing to train officers on the change in the law,” but noted that the new policy “does not entirely prohibit the issuance of criminal court summonses for unlicensed general vending,” adding that repeat offenders could still face criminal charges.
With Kaufman-Gutierrez’s appointment, Mamdani said he hopes to “fundamentally transform” the relationship between street vendors and the city, helping their work “thrive” instead of making it harder.
“Our street vendors are not a problem to solve—they are a community to support. They feed us, employ us, and give our streets life at every hour,” Mamdani said. “Many New Yorkers’ fondest memories are of grabbing late-night food at their local taco truck or halal cart. But City Hall has too often made their work harder instead of helping it thrive. That changes now.”
“With this office and with Carina’s leadership, we will fundamentally transform the relationship that street vendors have with the city,” he added. “By streamlining bureaucracy and working closely with street vendors themselves, we can lower costs for vendors and their customers alike.”
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