Fire Victims Trying to Live Out of RVs on Burned Property; Town Code Prohibits | Hacker News Reader

Fire Victims Trying to Live Out of RVs on Burned Property; Town Code Prohibits

denver.cbslocal.com

28 pointsmooreds6 comments

Yep, this situation is pretty frustrating. I used to live in old town Superior which is entirely burned, and am good friends with some of my previous neighbors who have lost their places. Housing is in short supply here, and high number of displaced families have further strained the market. I offered my little camper trailer to a couple who are now out of short term disaster housing and need a place to stay, hoping they could park it on their property, but they declined based on concerns over legality. Turns out they were right to do that!

I personally think restrictions on living in RVs in general are silly, but the failure of the affected city governments to carve out exceptions under these circumstances is downright nonsensical to me.

When I was young my family lived in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County. Our neighbor's drunkard brother lived in an unserviced RV on their back lot. He sang at the top of his lungs at 3am and shat in an open-air toilet and often leered at my sister over the fence. So this is the scenario such laws are trying to prohibit, basically controlling for bad neighbors and hygiene and having more people on a lot than it's zoned for. Argue against NIMBY laws all you want (and I see the point—the alternative for that guy was homelessness and dying in the street), but our situation was representative of why those laws exist.

I agree with you re the exceptions. Doesn't seem hard to pass a law allowing temporary RV living during a rebuild.

The plumbing issues sound like a problem, but I don't know that RV laws can stop your neighbors from singing too loud or leering at you.

In my jurisdiction you can apply for a permit to live in an RV for some bounded period of time while your house is getting built or whatever.

You are right, those things weren't relevant and I probably shouldn't have mentioned them; just an unpleasant memory. The sanitation, however, was definitely an issue.

Seems odd that a town can prevent people from living in an RV

Vagrancy / NIMBY / property values ... that is not surprising at all.

The interesting thing is such laws are of course preferentially/conditionally applied to you if you "look homeless". In this case they are being applied to owners, which implies a "sucky local politics" subcurrent.

Why would the mayor not waive enforcement in this case? Smells like a shitty town government.

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