On Wednesday, October 26, 2016, the NYC Veterans Alliance presented testimony at the NYC Council Committee on Consumer Affairs hearing on a package of bills known as the Street Vendor Modernization Act. Below is the testimony presented by Kristen Rouse:

The NYC Veterans Alliance, in partnership with Pathfinder, is pleased to release an important set of surveys that will help to assess the needs of the NYC veterans community. If you’re a veteran or military member, student veteran, or spouse or domestic partner of a veteran or military member in NYC or the NY Metro area, we hope you'll provide critical input on specific issue areas.

On Wednesday, November 18, the NYC Veterans Alliance Street Vendor Committee, in partnership with Veterans 4 Veterans NYC, Inc., met with Council Member Eric Ulrich, Chair of the City Council’s Committee on Veterans, to discuss needed reforms for NYC’s veteran street vendors. CM Ulrich was receptive and empathetic to the concerns and recommendations of the group, which included five seasoned veteran street vendors who represented a range of experience with vending food and merchandise using the city’s variety of permits available to veteran vendors. The meeting explored several potential legislative remedies to the current problems encountered by veteran vendors.

Businesses must meet certain requirements in order to compete for and win bids for contracts with NYC government, and goals have been set for increased contracts for women and minority-owned businesses. Currently veteran-owned businesses are not in a competitive category for contracting with NYC government. A total of 80.82% of respondents indicated that they view this as either essential or very important.