West Palm Beach, FL Soliciting & Door-to-Door: Solicitor Permits (2026)

Chapter 22, Article VI of the City Code defines a peddler broadly: anyone who travels house to house, street to street, or sells from a wagon, vehicle, or temporary stand to offer or sell goods, wares, food, or merchandise, including transient and itinerant merchants (§ 22-251). Before making a single sale, that person must obtain an identification card from the police department (§ 22-271). The police chief investigates every applicant and may refuse a card to anyone convicted within the previous five years of a crime involving moral turpitude, and the department may charge an administrative fee set by resolution (§ 22-272).

Peddlers must exhibit the card on request of any citizen while working (§ 22-273). The police chief can revoke a card for fraud or misrepresentation in the application, any violation of the peddler division, a felony or dishonesty-related misdemeanor conviction within five years, or conduct that breaches the peace or endangers public health or safety (§ 22-274); the mayor holds parallel authority to revoke a certificate of registration, using a ten-year lookback for dishonesty convictions (§ 22-275). Peddlers may not sell in no-parking zones, block pedestrian or vehicle traffic, create a nuisance, violate the city's noise ordinance, hand out flyers advertising their business, work without a waste receptacle for customer trash, dump liquid or solid waste on streets or into drains, leave gear on the public right-of-way, sell on private property without the owner's signed and notarized permission, occupy required parking spaces, or store a vending unit overnight in public view (§ 22-253(a)).

The entire downtown area bounded by Flagler Memorial Bridge, North Quadrille Boulevard, Okeechobee Boulevard, and Flagler Drive is off-limits to peddling except for Green Market vendors, city-approved special-event concessionaires, and franchise holders (§ 22-253(b)). Registration certificates are also void within two blocks of any permitted special event during its operating hours (§ 22-253(c)). The police chief reports complaints and violations to the building official, which keeps the official registry (§ 22-252).