The stretch of pavement in Queens where Liliana Sanchez used to sell aguas frescas has been empty since city sanitation police forced her to pack up her pop-up tent canopy. Her 16-year-old daughter now spends school nights and weekends busing tables to help pay rent.
Across the street from Corona Plaza, sales at Alondra Cardoso’s hair salon have dipped 30%, or some $200 to $300 dollars a week, since the clientele from the former street vendor market no longer venture into her shop.
Delivery worker Jorge Marin, 35, now orders breakfast from a bakery at a nearby intersection. He used to load up on tamales and yogurt and steaming cups of champurrado at the market, which expanded during the height of the pandemic. Now, at the bakery, he said he spends more for less.
“It’s been dead,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said of the plaza since the vendors’ departure. “It’s taken the life out of the community.”
The scene on a recent day in Corona Plaza, Queens, where a crackdown on unlicensed vendors has quieted a once-thriving street market.
Christian Rodriguez/Gothamist
New York City sanitation police shut down the bustling street vendor market in Corona Plaza in late July, citing ongoing complaints about blocked sidewalks, “dirty conditions,” and “illegal vending” that took place too close to storefronts.
Vendors without one of the city’s limited and highly coveted permits and licenses were told to leave. Just a handful of stalls and long-time vendors remain, joined by a handful of newcomers who arrived in the wake of the clear out.
The crackdown’s consequences continue to reverberate throughout the largely working-class immigrant neighborhood.
Street vendors protest a crackdown on unlicensed food carts in Corona Plaza.
Arya Sundaram / Gothamist
More than 80 vendors — who are mostly women and immigrants without any legal immigration status, according to advocacy groups — lost their livelihoods and income following the crackdown, after…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply