We won!! DC street vendors won a historic victory with the passage in April 2023 of the Street Vendor Advancement Amendment Act of 2023. The Act decriminalizes street vending in DC and is a result of five years of organizing by Vendedores Unidos/ Vendors United (VU) and Beloved Community Incubator. Please support us as we engage the next phase of the struggle - ensuring that the Act, which is now fully in effect as of October 1, 2023, is implemented in a way that is fair and accessible for DC street vendors!

The Act removes the 6 main barriers that had been criminalizing street vendors and denying street vendors the safety of a license and access to the formal economy:

Vending without a license is decriminalized!
- The misdemeanor offense for vending without a license has been removed from the criminal code as of July 1st, 2023.
License costs are now vastly reduced
Steep food code barriers have been removed
- A new microenterprise home kitchen permit is the first in DC history that will allow small business owners, including street vendors, to start and operate food business from their home kitchens that are able to sell all types of cooked food
- Street vendors will also now be able to sell any type of cooked food and pre-cut fruit and vegetables - previously, vendors had been functionally restricted to selling only hot dogs & half smokes
Criminal background check requirements have been removed as a license prerequisite
Vendors won amnesty for vending fines and unpaid sales tax dating back to 2010
New vending zones will allow vendors to participate in self-management of the street and support vendors to create dense, organized vending zones throughout the city
- Previously, city restrictions allowed for only three vendors to sell on any one side of a block throughout the city

Even with the reduction in license fees, vendors still have to apply for a whole host of licenses on the path toward becoming fully licensed. Depending on the type of business, they could range from $174 to over $1300. On top of this, vendors have to jump through many hoops. Some of these include:

The Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection (DLCP) has a grievous track record of language access failures - DLCP received a failing grade in the latest Language Access Audit conducted by the DC Office of Human Rights (OHR) and has been out of compliance with the DC Language Access Act since it became law in 2004.
The Department of Health must actually swiftly create the microenterprise home kitchen permit that will allow small food businesses to operate from home kitchens - without this permit, and a fair inspection system to accompany it, food vendors will remain vulnerable to enforcement. These inspections also cost hundreds of dollars to request, and historically, DOH has enacted regulatory barriers for street vendors in lieu of creating transparent inspection requirements
DC requires specific kinds of vending carts and equipment to pass inspections. While the law that vendors won requires that DOH evaluate new proposals for approved cart designs, vendors still will have to pay for costly upgrades to their equipment in order to be fully licensed.

Please contribute funds to help us to ensure that vendors can access the licenses that they organized for and won, and to ensure that the Act’s provisions are swiftly implemented in ways that are fully accessible for vendors!

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From November 2022...

DC street vendors are on the precipice of winning historic reforms to DC vending laws, a hard fought victory that will come after five years of tireless organizing by Vendors United // Vendedores Unidos (VU) and Beloved Community Incubator (BCI). The DC Council is scheduled to hold its second vote on Tuesday, April 4th on the Street Vending Advancement Amendment Act of 2023, which will decriminalize street vending, reduce the cost of vending licenses & permits by more than 75% and lay out a path of food freedom for street vendors and all small food businesses to operate from home kitchens under DC's cottage food law. The Council voted 12-0 in favor of the bill during its first vote on March 7th.

Street vending is an essential part of DC culture, going as far back as the 1800s when Alethia Browning Tanner and Sophia Browning Bell sold produce downtown to purchase their own freedom and that of their family and friends. Since then street vending has provided a lifeline to many marginalized communities of color who are excluded from the formal labor market, including returning citizens and migrants, and there is a long history of Black street vendors in DC. To this day street vending in high foot traffic areas downtown remains one of the only ways that poor and working class residents can benefit from DC’s tourism industry.

Unfortunately, continued harassment from police and punitive regulatory barriers, including a food code that strangles small food businesses, has made it increasingly difficult for vendors to thrive in the city. In the 1980’s there were 10,000 street vendors in the district, there are only a couple of hundred active today. The historically low numbers of vendors is a result of high license and permit costs ($2,000 minimum), limited vending sites in the city, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs’ (DCRA) inaccessible licensing process, and police harassment. DC’s carceral street vending regulations and food code keep vendors in an unending cycle of criminalization and poverty.

The fight to decriminalize street vending without a license and reform DC street vending laws is a racial, gender, and economic issue. In fact, recently obtained data revealed that between Jan 1st, 2018 and Sep 30th, 2022, 95.4% of the people arrested for “vending offenses” were BIPOC. The majority of vendors arrested were Black (79.7%), followed by Latine (13.9%). Read BCI's report, Where the Sidewalk Ends Part II, to learn more about the need to transform DC's street vending laws.

#DecrimVendingDC

By Beloved Community Incubator

#DecrimVendingDC

We won!! The new law is fully in effect & now we need to ensure fair and accessible implementation