How Los Angeles Can Govern Street Vending With the Respect It Deserves

The City, State, and County Have to Innovate to Fairly Govern the Half-Billion Dollar Business

Street vending isn’t just ubiquitous in Los Angeles. It’s a half-billion-dollar industry, according to a 2015 report by nonprofit research organization Economic Roundtable.

Street vending can no longer be dismissed by policymakers and privileged residents as an underground economy, or an aberration, or a burden to the nation’s second-largest city. Street vending is, economically and geographically, at the heart of the Los Angeles experience and economy. But the state, county, and city have yet to figure out how to govern this fact of L.A. life, to the detriment of the 50,000 …