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Previously:

• Crescent City Councilors Tap Brakes On Proposed RVs-on-Private-Property Ordinance

• City Council Weighs-in On RV Living Regulations

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Two months after they tapped the brakes on a proposed ordinance governing RVs on private property, saying they felt it was too restrictive, the Crescent City Council got a better idea of how other communities approach the issue.

City Attorney Martha Rice on Monday gave a breakdown of the regulations in Arcata, Fortuna, Humboldt County, Brookings and Del Norte County. She said she also considered how the city would enforce its regulations as well as concerns raised by Crescent Fire Protection Chief Kevin Carey.

Councilors weighed in on setbacks between an RV and a building, whether they should be on gravel or paved surfaces or simply a level surface and if the same rules governing single-family homes should apply to duplexes or triplexes.

Councilors also opined on RV occupancy with Mayor Pro Tem Ray Altman pointing out that Crescent City is working to solve a housing crisis and in some cases, living in an RV may be someone’s only option.

“If people are renting out RVs so that someone has a place to live, are we going to start evicting people?” Altman said. “I don’t like that.”

The Crescent City Municipal Code currently prohibits people from living in an RV unless they’re in a mobile home park. The Municipal Code doesn’t define what a living space is, Rice said, though the Residential Building Code does. That definition, that a space where someone is “sleeping, eating, cooking and bathing” could be a good argument for defining an RV as a living space under the Residential Building Code, she said.

Under the proposed ordinance, which took roughly five years to craft, occupancy in an RV would be limited to the R1 and R2 — or low and medium-density — residential zones without a permit for a maximum of 14 consecutive nights and a total of 14 nights in any 90-day period, according to Rice.

Crescent City Mayor Blake Inscore asked why the ordinance didn’t consider high-density residential zones, or R3s.

“We have areas that are zoned R3 when they probably should be R2,” he said. “It feels like you could literally go one block away and you could have it and now you can’t. It’ snot like the neighborhood’s changed in a block.”

As for storage, while there are no specific regulations governing RVs, if it meets the city’s definition of an oversized vehicle, which is longer than 22 feet, on-street parking is limited to eight hours in a 24-hour period.

The city does have an over-the-counter permit enabling residents to park an RV in front of their home on their side of the street for up to seven days, Rice said.

“Those are limited to one per month and those were an attempt to accommodate short-term visitors,” she told the Council.

When it comes to storing an RV, most neighboring jurisdictions have regulations governing private property, though they’re “a little bit all over the place,” Rice said.

The proposed regulation in Crescent City’s draft ordinance, that a property owner needed a permit to store an RV, didn’t exist in most jurisdictions, the city attorney said.

Instead, most jurisdictions regulate where RVs should be stored, Rice said. In Eureka, they can’t be parked in the front or on the side of a building, for example. An RV parked on private property in Arcata for more than 72 hours must be out of the public right of way. And in Trinidad, storing an RV is allowed as long as access to the building isn’t obstructed and it’s not closer than 5 feet to the property line.

Over the state line in Brookings, storing an RV in a residential zone is permitted as long as it’s on a gravel or hard surface and 5 feet from the property line.

Regulations on living in an RV, however, were varied.

In Del Norte County, someone can live in an RV for up to 14 days within a 30-day period with permission from the owner and a permit from the Community Development Department.

A resident can stay in an RV for longer than 14 days if there is a development permit on file with the county and if water and sewer connections have been approved by the county building inspector.

It was Inscore who brought up whether storing RVs should be allowed at multi-family dwellings and how that would work. He pointed out that there are duplexes with side yards that are large enough to hold an RV. He said some of the apartment complexes within the city limits count as one parcel, though they may have been multiple properties that had merged a long time ago.

Rice said that as the ordinance is being crafted, zoning would have to be taken into consideration, but the Council can provide its own feedback and opinions.

“Do you want your apartment complex parking lot filled with them?” The city attorney asked a hypothetical landlord. “Then you don’t have parking for the cars…”

Inscore said he felt that would be a decision for an apartment complex property manager to make, not the City Council.

Carey, who participated in the discussion via Zoom, asked Councilors to keep in mind that RV storage affects not only the property owner, but his neighbors as well.

He pointed out that his firefighters had responded to an RV fire a few weeks ago on Breen Street. Had it not been for the neighboring homeowner using a garden hose to keep the blaze in check, “we would have lost part of two residences,” Carey said.

“When we talk about a 5 foot setback from either a property line or structure, we’re talking about 8-20 foot flame lengths we have no chance to stop from spreading,” he said.“The setback discussion is really about protecting those neighbors who really didn’t have a say in choosing for an RV to be there and I think a lot of the discussion kind of needs to have that mindset.”

When it comes to occupancy of an RV, Inscore said he liked being consistent with the county’s regulations, which allow someone to continue to stay in an RV beyond 14 days if they have an active development permit on file and if they have the proper hookups for water and sewer.

However, Inscore also brought up the Council’s approval of an ordinance governing accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, as well as the roughly 275 new housing units in various stages of development within city limits. He said he and his colleagues might consider establishing a clause in its ADU ordinance that temporarily lists an RV as an ADU until those new housing units come on line.

“By the time we get to the end of 2025, we’ll have added over 275 new units in the city limits,” he said. “By that point in time, I’m not sure I buy the argument of the need to rent somebody’s RV because there’s no place to rent in Crescent City. As far as just the availability of [housing] stock, that’s going to change in a year.”

Rice said she’d get to work on a formal draft ordinance to bring back to the Council at a future meeting.

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