In the wake of the pandemic, the 16th and 24th Street BART stations became overwhelmed by unpermitted vendors selling stolen and other goods. They have been accused of blocking pedestrian traffic, extorting money from other sellers, and threatening BART workers and passersby.
Former Supervisor Hilary Ronen described trying to fix the vending issue as “literally one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever dealt with in my life.”
The problem? Vending is legal, thanks to California Senate Bill 946, a well-intentioned state law signed in 2018 that decriminalized vending and took away cities’ right to cite vendors.
The bill did not envision the kind of rampant vending of stolen goods that appeared after the pandemic.
Over the course of two years, three fatal shootings occurred at or near the Mission BART plazas. The crime and blocked sidewalks made it possible for Ronen to convince the city attorney that the city could call for a temporary ban based on health and safety issues.
In the meantime, Senator Scott Wiener and others have worked to amend the state law so that San Francisco police officers can cite vendors who repeatedly sell stolen goods.
The Wiener bill failed in 2024, but has recently been resurrected as SB 276 and hearings on it will be held March 19 at 9 a.m.
Here is a chronology of what has been tried over the last two years to discourage unpermitted vending.
It’s too soon to tell if Mobile Command Unit No. 2 will make a difference: The police department has offered overtime to officers who can help keep it from being defaced: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep the van safe, free from vandalism,” a department email reads. “Addressing quality of life issues in the area” would be officers’ responsibility “as well.”
The ebb and flow of enforcement is steady, and it is clear from spending time at the plaza that “there are multiple economies at work,” as Mission Local’s Oscar Palma wrote, observing denizens for 10 hours. “Some people come here to buy and sell goods. Some people come here to buy and sell drugs. Some people come here to steal from people who are buying or selling.”
But the plaza and surrounding streets do seem somewhat cleaner with the mayor’s attention, and Mission Local has undertaken an effort to gather photos of the area from residents and passers-by, documenting the change in conditions and keeping the city accountable.
Visuals for this piece were inspired by “Is this the future of downtown San Francisco?” by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Great article. Thanks, as always, for the great overview. The problem is pretty clearly one of enforcement. I would also suggest fines/ticketing for people who purchase these stolen goods (which presents its own enforcement issues of course).
Please showcase block of Mission between 14th and 15th as well. I would say it’s even worse than the BART plaza! I can’t get home without walking into the bus lane!
It’s insane how complicated this has been made out to be. Can someone just plop down on a blanket in the middle of the Ferry Building farmers market and sell room-temperature meat from Safeway and toothpaste? I’m guessing no. Why has it been allowed here? Take back the BART plazas for the community (didn’t there used to be a salsa bad on the weekends??) or just build over them like all the other BART stations.
Why allow “street vending” at all? I can understand there may – may be an argument for people selling prepared food – but I doubt the health department rules allow that.
Why allow it at all?
We should encourage and facilitate regulated fresh food stalls in the BART plazas to crowd out bad uses with good uses. There’s enough culinary wisdom in the Mission that showcasing it could make Mission street food a destination.
Police should not expect City employees (SFPW) to take on the work of verifying permit status because those employees are not properly trained in deescalating situations that often crop up when illegal vendors ignore those verifying permits. Patrols are needed. Not in cars driving by slowly but by pairs of officers who have a route they patrol. The officers will earn the respect of legal vendors. The consistent presence of officers will disrupt the illegal vendors ability to make money. SFPD should use the ordinance of possession of stolen goods to also cite buyers. If no one bought the discounted, likely stolen, items, there would not be people selling them. How sad that some of the citizens complain with their left hand about the vending while their right hand buys the cheap items in order to save a buck or two.
Mission St. between 14 and 15th is an ABSOLUTE Sh*tShow on the weekends. Illegal vending of (obviously) stolen goods mixed in with fentanyl sales, human waste and those sprawled out, too high to move. It happens every weekend, yet nothing is done. Sadly- St Johns church enables this bad behavior by letting a drug market exist often in front and alongside the church boundary. These people are not selling “artisan crafts”–They are buying and selling drugs which (in the mission at least) has tentacles in human trafficking among other things. Very few, if any of these folks are interested in treatment as long as there is nothing pushing them in that direction. Sadly, many of those who work in SF Govt. who are charged with keeping the streets clean and safe are more interested in ideology than action. unless you run a non-profit, its really killing the economy of a once dynamic city.
“Switching enforcement to the police isn’t possible — California SB 946 decriminalized vending.”
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Sorry, but this is nonsense. The fact that street vending was decriminalized did not mean that selling stolen merchandise was legal. Rows and rows of merchandise on the sidewalk with original retail tags on them give police officers all the probable cause they need to investigate because there is no innocent explanation. You can’t buy retail goods and resell them at a profit.
I feel like ML’s position on this is that the only way to deal with this is to … not deal with it. 🙄
The headline is a question, but I have another: have other California cities figured this out? Or are they having the same problem? If the State Senate is happy to let a legislative solution to this problem die, that suggests other cities aren’t dealing with this problem as acutely as San Francisco is. So why aren’t they, and if they aren’t what can we learn from them?
Yes. It’s obvious who is part of this vibrant community and who are the criminals. This isn’t complicated, just typical SF City Hall incompetence.
A solution is really quite straightforward – create a SF task force to identify and prosecute the ringleaders of the *organized* fencing rings or street food rings. Allow for temporary enforcement actions against “vendors” for the sole purpose of identifying ringleaders.
Organized crime has long taken advantage of progressive politics by using the disadvantaged as the front people for their criminal operations. The progressive neighborhoods struggle internally between their reluctance to prosecute the disadvantaged and their despair at the decreased quality of daily life (case in point is Ronens ridiculous circular flailing for years as well-summarized in this article), to the point where nothing happens and the rings continue to profit. The impact to quality of life is not coming from the random independent sellers of food or crafts but from the blood-sucking squids of criminal organizations that will gladly flood the neighborhood with pain if there is even one more dollar to be made.
The solution suggested is key because all can agree regardless of personal politics; we may have mixed emotions about prosecuting a migrant selling fenced goods or a Honduran drug dealer coerced by persecution in their home country, but we all hate the rich bastards at the top of these pyramids, right?
Thanks for this really great article! Whatever one thinks about selling stolen goods and drugs at the BART plazas and their environs, Mission Local is doing the best reporting BY FAR of any newspaper in town on what’s really happening on the streets.
A coupla things early this morning. I vaguely recall that 1st stabbing. What ever became of the suspect? And for the “Estrella” person- you know it’s not legal. You have come several times and had your items seized EACH TIME. Can you not figure out that “geewhiz, this probably isn’t a great idea to keep coming here”?