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Mamdani extends ban on permits for new street fairs due to NYPD overtime
By
Carol Chen
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 4:24 p.m. ET
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Craig T Fruchtman/Getty Images
By
Carol Chen
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 4:24 p.m. ET
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is extending a decades-old moratorium on new street fairs through 2027, citing a likely increase in NYPD overtime.
The rule, published Friday on the City Record, will let the city reject applications for any street fair that did not take place in 2026. Fairs held this year remain eligible to renew permits next year.
The moratorium dates back to the years following 9/11, when the city stopped approving new festivals, citing the strain on the NYPD. The policy has continued every year since 2004.
The notice says the city “issues permits to over 200 street fairs and over 5,000 other events.” Issuing additional permits would drive up NYPD overtime and pull officers away from “core crime fighting, public safety and counter-terrorism duties,” the notice states.
The city comptroller projects overtime for NYPD officers will reach about $890 million in fiscal year 2026, the third-highest total on record, behind fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Police overtime for planned events, which includes parades and street fairs, rose from $97.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to $115.7 million in fiscal year 2025, according to the same report.
Open Plans, a transportation advocacy group, said the city only spent $29.5 million on uniformed overtime for street fairs and parades, which “is a drop in the bucket” in the total budget.
“An extension of the moratorium on street fairs is simply unnecessary, and the initial rationale for the ban does not hold water,” Michael Sutherland, an analyst at Open Plans, said in reaction to this year’s extension.
Michael Hyatt, president of Meteor Festivals, which produces more than a dozen street festivals in New York, said there are many non-profits, such as merchant associations and business improvement districts, that are eager to organize street fairs but can't due to the long-standing moratorium.
Other critics point to how the moratorium harms businesses in neighborhoods without a tradition of street fairs.
“Neighborhoods that have changed enormously since then have no path to a fair of their own, and a new generation of small businesses and community groups is shut out while other corridors are saturated,” said Jessica Walker, president and CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce.
Walker proposed that the administration should map where fairs cluster and where they are missing, and create a plan for including every neighborhood in the festivities.
An online hearing will be held on the moratorium on Nov. 24 at 10 a.m. before it becomes official.
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new york city
transportation
Carol Chen
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