L.A. Told Vendors to Get Legal. Then Cited Them Under a Camping Law.

Bass ordered the tickets dismissed, but a vendor near MacArthur Park said nobody had told her hers was gone.

About 20 street vendors gathered in MacArthur Park on Sept. 2, 2026 and asked the city to repeal the law police had ticketed them under. They want Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to strike 41.18 from her district, including the blocks around the park, LA Public Press reported.

One of those tickets went to Ana Vasquez, a vendor who spoke in Spanish at the press conference, on July 14. The outlet reviewed two 41.18 citations and two 41.18 warnings written to vendors working near the park. A cart with a cash box isn't a tent. The citations were written anyway.

Here's what the ordinance says it's for. Section 41.18 bans sleeping, sitting and lying in public space, and the council built it in 2021 to clear visible homelessness off the city's sidewalks. Sidewalk vending, meanwhile, is a licensed trade: Los Angeles legalized it in 2018, and California's Safe Sidewalk Vending Act, SB 946, took the crime out of it statewide.

So my position is the narrow one. The council should exempt permitted vendors from 41.18 by ordinance, or repeal the designation covering MacArthur Park outright, and it should do it in a council file with a roll call attached. Vendor organizers, city officials and legal experts all told LA Public Press the camping law doesn't reach vendors. Four pieces of paper say otherwise.

Mayor Karen Bass moved fast, and I'll credit it. On Aug. 27 she said she'd ordered the LAPD to stop citing vendors and to dismiss outstanding 41.18 citations issued in error. An order from the sixth floor isn't an ordinance, though. The text the officers read is still the text, and the next watch commander gets to read it the same way.

I thought the dismissal order had closed this. Then, on Aug. 31, a vendor near the park told LA Public Press nobody had informed her that her ticket was going away. Hernandez's office is now demanding that the LAPD personally notify every affected vendor.

Hernandez's spokesperson, Naomi Roochnik, didn't address the repeal demand directly, saying the councilmember had “consistently opposed 41.18, voted against every expansion of the ordinance.” Voting no on expansions is a record. It isn't a repeal, and the zone is in her district. The Unión Popular de Vendedores, which advocates for vendors in Westlake, asked her for “a clear, public stance” on removing 41.18 zones there. That's an answerable question with a yes or a no in it.

The strongest argument against me is real, and it isn't about tents at all. Residents and merchants around the park have asked for their sidewalks back, and the crowding is genuine. Fine — then regulate the commerce as commerce: permits, stalls, marked zones, widths measured in feet. A homelessness ordinance can't do any of that. It can only move people, which is why it keeps getting reached for.

Vasquez went further and alleged the tickets are part of a push to clear vendors before the 2028 Olympics. Bass's spokesperson, Maria Hurtado, said the mayor is committed to keeping Olympic preparations from costing working-class families, and that Bass and her staff will keep meeting with vendors. The LAPD didn't respond to LA Public Press's request for comment.

Two things would settle this in public: the citation count, published, and a vote. Bass and Hernandez own whichever one arrives first.

Source: lapublicpress.org, retrieved September 7, 2026.