Street vendors and advocacy groups launched a 24-hour “sleepout” in front of Governor Kathy Hochul’s office in Midtown Manhattan Monday, calling on the state’s chief executive to lift the city cap on permits for the sidewalk businesses.
A decades-old limit on licenses to legally hawk goods like halal food, hotdogs, pretzels, or churros in the streets of the Big Apple has led to a massive market of vendors operating their businesses outside of the law, and the largely-immigrant workers face routine crackdowns from city inspectors and law enforcement.
