Food cart owners strain to make ends meet: Jackson Heights, home to a sizable immigrant population and vibrant culinary scene, is increasingly unaffordable.
By Camila Dadabhoy
It's 7:30am and Ismail Khan is slicing onions in his halal food cart on the corner of 75th street, in Queens. He’s preparing for a twelve-hour workday. The remnants of Hurricane Ida are dissipating from the air, having already made its splash on each seller’s stand. He is one of the hundreds of vendors hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, swept in the current of an unprecedented hurricane, and impacted by another deadly, albeit silent, killer: the rent epidemic of New York City.
And yet, he looks up with a worn, genuine smile.
“Jackson Heights, darling, is a place where anyone from anywhere can start over,” Khan said.
Mr. Khan is an integral part of New York City’s halal food cart phenomenon. He knows his halal hot dogs well, he can make a juicy lamb gyro in his sleep, and he can cook a spicy chicken biryani any time of day. He’s been in the food business since he immigrated here from Pakistan, one of the 15,000 vendors struggling to make a living on street meat — many of them starting out in Jackson Heights.
The bustling corners and colorful alleyways of Jackson Heights, including Little India and Little Bangladesh, will completely transport you to South Asia. From the fish markets to the motley of animated languages heard on the street, to the traditional Indian spices and beans served up on chana masala hot dog (an upgrade from the typical chili dogs served in Times Square), the streets of Jackson Heights possess a hard-working, proletarian reflection of the elusive American dream, evidenced by the halal cart business like Mr. Khan’s.
Only a few decades ago, "halal" exclusively referred to an ancient method of slaughter that rendered meat acceptable for Muslims to eat. Halal is an Arabic term that translates to “permissible,” referring to certain Islamic guidelines to preparing meat.
Today, it's become entirely native to New York City — ubiquitous to the landscape and a lifestyle for Muslim immigrants. Since they first began emerging in the late 1980s, on the back of a wave of immigration from South Asia, halal carts have grown into some of the most omnipresent food carts in the city. While New York doesn't track cart licenses by the type of food served, the Queens College sociology department reported that between 1990 and 2005, the number of food vendors who self-identified as being of Egyptian, Bangladeshi, or Afghan descent “surged to 563 from 69.”
The economics of running a halal food cart in New York City is a daunting endeavor. The Street Vendor Project, part of the non-profit Urban Justice Center, is a membership-based project with more than 1,800 active vendor members, tackles the challenges food cart sellers, specifically immigrants facing language barriers, encounter everyday. This includes obtaining one of 3,000 pushcart permits issued by the Department of Health every year, a strenuous process that can take more than a decade to earn and leads to vendors paying permit holders, for a fee.
However, the vendors in Jackson Heights are like no other in the city. Most of these vendors find work in selling food from carts, part of this halal cart sensation that sweeps New York City, or setting up their own stands on the streets of Little India, Little Bangladesh, and Little Pakistan.
For decades, South Asian Muslim immigrants defaulted to selling their art, working jobs they knew they could do. Whether it was the culinary fast-food masterpiece of a hot gyro or the intricate jewelry business, their livelihoods were made off less than a hundred dollars a day — hardly enough to maintain a living for yourself, let alone in the commercial jungle of New York City.
Mehmet Ozcelik, manager of Backwoods jewelry shop located in the Jackson Heights underground station, said he “immigrated here ten years ago. I have managed this shop for eight of those years, because there isn't much else I know how to do.”
“I will always worry about making the rent,” Ozcelik said. “It comes with the dream.”
From the fight to obtain city permits to barely meeting the rent each month, immigrants like Khan and Ozcelik have learned to embrace the trials of the food vendor lifestyle to survive in New York City. But the cost of opportunity is a grave one.
“Sometimes I get worried,” said Bashirul Hoque, who has worked his cart in Queens for eight years. “I share a room with one person in a one bedroom apartment. I live alone, no family. I don’t mind my job. I get to meet a lot of people and talk to them. I understand it here.”
About 60 percent of the population in Jackson Heights are foreign-born, which is more than double the rate in New York City as a whole. Of that, 22 percent are of Asian descent and 82 percent of the people speak a different language at home. The range of diversity is vast, confirming the immigration population increase specifically in this era, and the increase in the food cart business.
In the late 19th century, poor living conditions in neighborhood “slums” across the city resulted in citywide reform efforts to improve urban housing. As a result, light, ventilation, and open green space became key pieces in the design of new developments, which is particularly evident in Jackson Heights.
Anointed as a New York City historic district in the early 1990’s, its designation comes with aesthetic protections that preserve the city’s culture and history — including its u-shaped buildings and large interior gardens. It was originally intended for the typical upper-middle class white family of Manhattan in the early 1900s, the Great Depression and the effect of white flight drew out the wealthy and resulted in lower-income families moving to the old, more affordable run-down apartments of the people before them.
A whopping 60 percent of the population are foreign-born, as it is home to large numbers of South Americans (particularly Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Argentinian), Indians, Pakistanis, Tibetans, Nepalese, and Bangladeshis and most of these cart owners are Asian owned. As a result of this migration, the city’s lack of rent-control has led to overcrowding, unsuitable living conditions, homelessness, and a continuous struggle in living paycheck to paycheck.
An October 2019 document from the Office of The New York State Comptroller states, “the greater Jackson Heights area’s large, vibrant immigrant community is the driving force behind the local economy. With its cultural diversity, strong entrepreneurial spirit and proximity to Manhattan, the neighborhood continues to attract new residents and visitors. While significant advances have been made over the past decade, there are still challenges, including the need for more affordable housing.”
With all its historical glory, the people of Jackson Heights still have hell to pay in rent, as if uprooting your life to pursue the American dream wasn’t hard enough already.
Rents in Jackson Heights overall are up nearly eight percent, fueled by a "relatively small inventory" compared to other neighborhoods, according to a MNS Real Estate report — increasing the anxieties of these small business owners. So, it all begs the same simple question for food vendors, comprising a far larger issue for the South Asian community: are they making ends meet?
Two-bedroom apartments in the neighborhood saw the biggest spike in the borough, jumping 17.4 percent between March and April, the report found, from around $2,540 to $2,560. In regards to Queens as a whole, prices for two bedroom units saw the greatest increase over last month, at .45 percent. For residents like Miah and Khan, the familiarity of Jackson Heights is all they know; moving elsewhere in the city would be a setup for failure in the job market.
Despite long odds, Ishaque Miah, an 11-year resident of 73rd street originally hailing from Bangladesh, said, “It feels like back home for me — this place. Less city. More sunlight. I can walk around and talk to people. I understand them, and they understand me...it’s all I know.”
The average hourly wage of a food truck seller, according to ZipRecruiter, is between $13-$14, less than New York City’s minimum wage. Census records show that 38 percent of the residents in Queens make lower than $50,000 a year, which by New York rent standards, is fairly low. Solely as a cart vendor, the monthly pay can range between $1,800-$2,400 —barely enough to make the rent.
The Census data also reports that 90 percent of New Yorkers make about or around $72,000 to live here, which is significantly higher than the 38 percent of residents in Jackson Heights. Furthermore, there’s about 65,000 apartment units in Jackson Heights and 82 percent of them are occupied.
Since 2017, there has been an increase in people moving here, and most apartments are multi-unit households. The demand to move to this part of town is obviously high, echoing the residents' contentment with their choice to move here despite its difficulty. For immigrants, coming to a city like Queens gives them a feel of home, lenient housing occupation restrictions and a swift avenue into a low-income job.
One vendor admitted that he knew he could “crash with a friend” in a studio apartment for a year simply to have the opportunity to be in New York. The security that immigrants feel coming to a diverse neighborhood like Jackson Heights, able to find work and live in close proximity to Manhattan, plays a major role in its steep competition for affordable housing.
Mr. Khan whips up a quick hot dog as he wraps up the dinner rush. Despite hailing from Pakistan as an Urdu speaker, he is well-versed in the area’s native Bengali tongue, mentioning he’s been working as a food cart seller for nine months and will quit in a few weeks, losing out to Five Guys.
“I work for a larger company, and it’s by commission,” Khan said. “I make maybe $100-$170 a day. My son and wife live in Pakistan. I have to earn more before I can bring them here.
Living in a space rented from a subletter, he believes his living conditions are “fine,” despite having to share a room with a five-person family in their small, two-bedroom apartment.
Alas, he said, it's “all he knows.”