Add The California Post on Google A dog eating meat out of a street vendor’s bag before it was served to customers. Cockroaches crawling out of a food truck. Mice scurrying beside open salsa. Raw meat baking unrefrigerated in the heat. People urinating around cooking equipment.
These are just a handful of the stomach-churning allegations listed in a staggering 662-page dossier of 9,746 public health complaints about street food vendors filed across Los Angeles County from 2023 until early 2026.
The disgusting details, obtained by the California Post through a public records request, emerge as LA Mayor Karen Bass ordered the LAPD this week to stop issuing criminal citations to street vendors who flout the rules.
The move will give un-permitted food carts free reign across the city, potentially letting the conditions get even worse.
The complaints uncovered by the Post, lodged with the LA County Department of Public Health, disturbingly offer little clue as to any action taken in response to the sickening alleged discoveries.
For example, at a taco stand near Hawthorne Boulevard, a complainant stated workers had nowhere to wash their hands and weren’t changing gloves.
“There was also a dog eating meat from the bag and the guy still continued to serve the meat from that bag,” the complaint stated.
The case was simply marked as “closed.”
Near LAX, another complainant reported open salsa and condiments beside trash cans as mice ran nearby.
That complaint was designated “canceled.”
And in Venice Beach, a complaint alleged that hot dogs, buns and condiments sat “heating in the sun all day long.”
In that case, the complaint was deemed “justified,” with no further details provided.
The LA County Public Health Department declined to provide specifics about what those determinations meant, or whether any action occurred as a result.
Instead, the agency said it has “shifted focus from street level unpermitted sidewalk food vending enforcement, to instead target the larger organizations that control many street level operations in order to conduct enforcement at the source.”
Stuart Waldman, CEO of the Los Angeles Business Federation, called the laundry list of complaints over street vendors “worse than I thought.”“It’s crazy to think that a brick-and-mortar restaurant can be shut down if the employees don’t wash their hands, they leave butter out overnight, their refrigerator runs two degrees warmer than they’re supposed to,” he told the Post.
“And street food vendors don’t have bathrooms, employees aren’t washing their hands, they don’t have refrigeration — you name it.”
George Francisco, board chair of the Westside Council of Chambers of Commerce and co-chair of the Los Angeles County Business Federation’s Responsible Governance Committee, said the complaints were “not surprising.”
“I’ve seen worse and I’ve probably seen more, personally,” he told the Post. “The idea of a box truck pulling up with slabs of compressed meat sitting in the back, being popped on a skewer and being roasted for sale, is one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen.”In the City of Los Angeles, sidewalk vendors need a city vending permit, while those selling food also require an LA County public-health permit.
The county oversees food safety, while city authorities enforce other rules governing where and how vendors can operate.
On Thursday, Bass said her office “stands firmly with street vendors” while directing the LAPD to stop citing them criminally, even if they lack required permits or set up in front of brick-and-mortar storefronts.
Her administration is also working to dismiss criminal citations that she said were improperly issued. Her office did not respond to questions about the public health complaints.
Bass’ stance has her at odds with Councilwoman Nithya Raman, her opponent in the mayoral race, who has argued the city should make it easier for vendors to obtain permits and enter the legal system.
“Street vending is a vibrant part of Los Angeles, and it can coexist with our brick-and-mortar businesses when vendors are operating safely, cleanly, following all appropriate rules, and with a license,” her office said in a statement to the Post.
“We have regulations in place to make sure vendors are meeting health and safety standards, but consistent enforcement citywide requires departments that are efficient and responsive.”
An estimated 50,000 vendors operate throughout LA, while only 687 active vending permits were recorded as of September 2024. Only 53 of those permits were for food vendors.
On a recent visit to the El Salvador Corridor in Pico-Union, vendors had set up near red curbs and in other areas where vending is restricted, grease and dirty water spilling into the gutter.
Raul Claros, co-founder of the El Salvador Corridor Association, estimates that more than 120 street vendors now crowd the area.
“It’s the Wild Wild West,” he said of the corridor, which has grown into a commercial and cultural hub for Salvadoran migrants.
Claros doesn’t want the vendors chased out — but issued permits, inspected and given places where they can sell safely without overwhelming sidewalks or setting up directly outside existing businesses.
“You legalized [street vending], but you won’t invest in it,” Claros told The Post, referring to state laws that made street vending more immune from criminal enforcement, while leaving local governments to manage the system on the ground.
For Miguel Carranza and his wife, Irma Diaz, the issue is especially personal.
Carranza immigrated from El Salvador and started as a street vendor before the couple made the leap to a food truck and then a brick-and-mortar business, opening El Corredor restaurant in 2010 along the corridor.
Now, after surviving COVID and inflation, their business faces another challenge.
At lunchtime, El Corredor can sit largely empty while street vendors compete for customers nearby without the same rent and other overhead.
Brenda Montoya, a second-generation business owner along the corridor, remembers a dramatically different neighborhood before COVID and the surge in street vending outside her store.
“Everything, the economy was better right here,” Montoya told The Post. “It was full. You couldn’t even park right here.”
Now, she said, customers are scarce — as street vendors sell some of the same merchandise offered by stores paying rent just feet away.
“Right now everything is, like, kinda empty, no sales,” she said.
