LAPD Warned Westlake Street Vendors Under L.A.’s Anti-Camping Law, Records Show

Three street vendors near 7th and Alvarado streets in Westlake were handed written warnings on July 1 accusing them of violating Los Angeles' anti-camping ordinance. Copies of those warnings were obtained by LA Public Press, which first reported the practice on August 26, 2026. The outlet also obtained a citation issued under the same code in 2025. The Los Angeles Police Department declined to comment.

The ordinance is Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18. It bans “sleeping, sitting, and lying” in public space, and it was built to push visible homelessness off the city's sidewalks. What matters here is what a ticket under it carries. A 41.18 citation can be prosecuted criminally, while the administrative citations cities may write for vending violations leave no criminal record, Ritu Mahajan Estes, directing attorney at Public Counsel, told the outlet.

For someone selling fruit on a Westlake corner, that's the difference between a fine and a court file.

Two codes, one 500-foot line

The July 1 documents are labeled “traffic violation warnings,” LA Public Press reported. They say the vendors broke 41.18 by selling within 500 feet of a park. One vendor also got a criminal citation under 42.13, the city's sidewalk vending ordinance, on the same 500-foot theory. That ordinance contains no such park buffer, the outlet reported. Vendor organizers, city officials and legal experts told it that 41.18 doesn't apply to street vendors at all.

Organizers also gave the outlet a “Know Your Rights and Responsibilities” flyer bearing the LAPD logo. It tells vendors that storing property within 500 feet of a park violates 41.18. The department declined to say whether it produced or handed out the flyer.

What a ticket costs a vendor

The 42.13 citation requires a court date. Skipping it could bring a more serious charge, Sergio Jimenez, an organizer with Community Power Collective who works with the three vendors, told LA Public Press. Showing up carries its own risk. Federal agents have been waiting outside courthouses to arrest immigrants. Mahajan Estes said the practical effect is that some vendors stop working rather than gamble on a ticket and a court appearance.

Jimenez said the citations are “demoralizing for a lot of vendors because we've been pushing for vendors to legalize since 2019.” The same vendors were pushed off the sidewalk in front of the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station last year when the city fenced it off, he said. They had to find somewhere else to sell.

City Hall says it's looking

Members of Union Popular de Vendedores, a Westlake vendor and small business alliance, wrote to Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez and Mayor Karen Bass on July 22. The enforcement violates SB 946, they said. That's the state law that decriminalized street vending in 2019. It also bars cities from confining vendors to particular zones of the public right-of-way, except for health, safety and welfare reasons.

Hernandez represents the area. She has backed trees and bollards that keep vendors from setting up outside the Metro station. But she didn't start the citation effort, her spokesperson Naomi Roochnik told LA Public Press. Roochnik said the office has raised serious concerns with the department and asked it to review and rectify its conduct immediately. She said the office also wants any misinformation given to vendors corrected, and a remedy for every citation improperly issued.

Bass, in a written statement, said her office is gathering information from the department and the City Attorney's office. She said it's also working with vendors and Council District 1.

How many vendors have been warned or cited isn't known. Jimenez said others have received similar paperwork. Organizers are still collecting copies to see which codes officers are writing. The outlet's account doesn't say whether any citation has been withdrawn.

Source: lapublicpress.org, retrieved September 1, 2026.