One week out from the Mission Street vending ban, Supervisor Hillary Ronen insists she won’t delay the ban, and revealed the alternative sites where vending will be allowed.  

As we enter Year Three of an out-of-control illegal vending scene at the 24th and Mission Street BART plaza, which has also spread up to the 16th and Mission Street BART, we got the shock news in October that street vending would be banned outright on Mission Street, even for those who had legal vending permits. According to the district’s supervisor Hillary Ronen, DPW employees enforcing the permitting system were being violently threatened and even wearing bullet-proof vests on the job.

The ban was supposed to start in early November, but was pushed back to November 27 because the city had its hands full with other APEC matters. And with the vending ban now looming to begin in just one week, on the Monday after Thanksgiving, Mission Local reports that Ronen is refusing to back down on or delay the ban, despite pleas from vendors.

The ban is being billed as a temporary 90-day ban on vending on the 14-block stretch of Mission Street between 14th and Cesar Chavez streets. But Ronen told vendors, “It could be 90 days, it could be a year. I don’t know,” at a community meeting Friday, per Mission Local.

But her office insists they will not delay or reconsider the ban. “Absolutely not,” Ronen’s legislative aide Santiago Lerma told Mission Local. “The condition on the street is such that it’s an emergency.”

The city had mentioned in previous announcements that an alternative location would be provided for the legal and permitted vendors. We now know where two of those alternative sites will be; the giant, empty former furniture store at 2137 Mission Street (at 17th Street), and a parking lot at 24th and Capp streets.

So the legal vendors will have a place to go. But the irony here is that the legal vendors are the ones engaging with Ronen’s office for solutions, while the illegal vendors are, well, probably out doing illegal vending. And the huge question that remains is whether the city can enforce the ban, given the inconsistency of enforcement throughout this street vending saga. But we’ll have an answer in one week’s time to the question of whether they can enforce this ban, and whether it affects the increasingly beleaguered corner of 24th and Mission Streets.

Related: Street Vending to Be Banned Outright on Mission Street, as City Workers Cite Assaults [SFist]

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist