Green Carts: A Fading Dream for New York City Vendors
In 2008, the city health department opened up 1,000 permits for street vendors to sell fresh fruits and vegetables in New York City’s food deserts. However, a new analysis of data obtained from the health department reveals that just 149 vendors hold those Green Carts permits, while 1,445 others remain on a waitlist.
Initially, the program aimed to provide opportunities for vendors to make a living selling fresh fruits and vegetables in communities where healthy food was hard to find. Five years after its launch, in 2013, over 500 vendors held those produce permits. However, the gap between what the city promised and what it delivered has widened since then. Nearly 1,500 vendors are now on the permit waitlist, which has been sealed off since May 2022 after briefly opening for three months prior.
Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the non-profit Street Vendor Project, attributes the disconnect to an "extremely onerous bureaucratic process" that has created unnecessary delays for prospective vendors. "People who want to be able to work as Green Carts vendors should be able to just apply to do it. There shouldn’t be this huge backlog of months and months or years and years of waiting, to the point where it might not even be relevant for the person who got on the waitlist back in the day," she said.
Vendors who have been called off the waitlist do not generally turn in an application to begin the permitting process, the data shows. Last year, just 91 of the 600 vendors called off the queue officially applied.
For vendors who are still interested, the wait to put in an application has been painfully slow, with months sometimes passing before a new group of applicants – no more than 160 at a time in recent years – was offered permits.
To address the issue, Shari Logan, a department spokesperson, said the health department is working on ways to speed up the application process, including by issuing more applications at once. However, Kaufman-Gutierrez notes that more needs to be done to encourage vendors to apply and succeed in the program.
High-Cart Costs
The health department is also reaching out to vendors to understand why only a handful of them have turned in applications after being called off the Green Carts waitlist. However, Matthew Shapiro, Street Vendor Project’s legal director, believes it is, in part, due to the difficult economics of running a perishable food business within the health department’s restrictive regulations.
Green Carts permits are allocated by boroughs, with set quotas for each, and are legally operable only within police precinct areas where "the rate of fresh produce consumption is substantially lower than the citywide average." Vendors are required to operate from set-ups that meet specific standards, which Shapiro estimated cost about $5,000 to procure.
Ernesto Garcia, a 39-year-old native of the Mexican state of Puebla, said it cost him and his mother at least $36,000 to start up their Green Carts business in Soundview, Bronx, when his mother’s name was called off the waitlist in 2022, after what he said had been more than a decade of waiting.
Conclusion
The Green Carts program, initially aimed at providing opportunities for vendors to sell fresh produce in food deserts, has failed to deliver on its promise. With many vendors still waiting for permits, others have abandoned the opportunity to apply, and those who have been called off the waitlist have turned in only a handful of applications. The health department’s strict regulations and high startup costs have made it difficult for vendors to succeed in the program.
FAQs
Q: How many Green Carts vendors currently hold permits?
A: 149
Q: How many vendors are on the waitlist?
A: 1,445
Q: Why have so few vendors turned in applications?
A: Vendors face difficult economics, including high startup costs and restrictive regulations, making it challenging for them to succeed in the program.
Q: What is the health department doing to address the issue?
A: The department is working to speed up the application process and is reaching out to vendors to understand why so few have turned in applications.
