Street Vendors Will Be Paid After City Trashed Their Carts

NEW YORK — Justice is sweet for these mobile merchants. The city agreed in a recently approved settlement to pay hundreds of street vendors who say their property was seized and destroyed.

Vendors accused the city in a federal class-action lawsuit of taking their property without giving them a voucher to recover it or even destroying it in front of them, advocates say. Now 319 vendors will get a total of $188,531 under a recently approved settlement in the case, the city Law Department says.

"The City thought this property was garbage, and they threw it in the garbage. But this is how these vendors earn their livelihoods," Matthew Shapiro, the legal director at the Urban Justice Center's Street Vendor Project, said in a statement Monday.

The Street Vendor Project filed the lawsuit in April 2017 on behalf of two vendors who alleged that their property was illegally destroyed the year before. Both vendors, Sanwar Ahmed and Ana Buestan, accused the city of scrapping their carts after cops and health inspectors confiscated the equipment and slapped them with summonses.

They allegedly weren't alone — the city had a policy of destroying some vendors' equipment instead of giving them a voucher to retrieve it from the NYPD after it was seized, violating their constitutional rights, the suit argued.

Each affected vendor will now get at least $585 for their pushcarts, coolers and other items under the settlement in the case, which a judge approved March 30, the Street Vendor Project says. Some $2,501 will go to Ahmed, an 89-year-old who sells a Bangladeshi puffed rice snack called jhal muri, according to the settlement.

The deal also requires the Department of Health to hold an additional training session for its staffers on how to deal with property seized from vendors. THE CITY first reported details of the settlement last month.

"The police told me my food was dirty. But this is how I support myself," said Maria Calle, an Ecuadorian shish kabob vendor who had her cart destroyed in 2017.

"I hope now they will treat us with more respect," Calle added in a statement.

While Judge Sidney Stein has given the settlement preliminary approval, he will hold a hearing in Aug. 13 to make a final decision on whether it is fair, court records show.

Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the Law Department, said the agreement is "fair and in the best interests of all parties."

Advocates announced the deal's approval as the City Council considers a proposal to more than double the number of street vendor permits. Advocates say the current cap of 3,000 permits forces vendors to pay thousands of dollars for one on the black market, but Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has said other changes need to come to the industry first.