Nevada County Supervisors Reject Recreational Vehicle Housing Ordinance

NEVADA CITY — An ordinance that would have allowed people to live year-round in recreational vehicles on developed residential property died Tuesday before the Nevada County Board of Supervisors, rejected 5-0 after speakers on both sides of the issue asked the board to vote it down. The decision ends an effort that began at a board workshop in 2024 and survived two rounds of revisions.

Residents who had fought the proposal for a year called it a wildfire and sanitation risk the county could not enforce. The housing advocates who spent years asking for such an ordinance told supervisors the version before them was so demanding that almost no one could use it. When Chair Lisa Swarthout invited a motion, none came until County Counsel advised that the ordinance would otherwise die for lack of one. Supervisor Robb Tucker of District 2 then moved to deny, a second followed, and all five districts voted yes on a roll call.

“It seems like we’ve got opponents and proponents,” Tucker said. “Nobody is on board with this.”

The proposal would have amended Section 12.03.150 of the county zoning code, which already permits temporary recreational vehicle occupancy during construction, for urgent medical care, for security housing, and for seasonal use. The amendment would have added year-round living, allowing one recreational vehicle per legal parcel as a second dwelling on property that already held a permitted home, in residential agricultural, agricultural exclusive, forest, and timber production zoning districts.

Getting a vehicle onto a parcel legally would have meant passing through three county departments, Planning Director Brian Foss told the board. A zoning clearance would have come first, then building permits for any grading or electrical work, then environmental health approval to connect the vehicle to a well and a septic system. The permit would have lasted two years, and keeping it would have required passing an inspection and starting again.

The vehicle faced a second set of tests, drawn largely from the Tiny Homes on Wheels ordinance the board adopted in January 2025. It would have needed current registration, a pad able to bear its weight, tie-downs, and screening to conceal the undercarriage, wheels, and axles. Anything sited above 3,200 feet in elevation would have faced additional wind and snow load requirements under the building code. Inside, the ordinance called for heat, running water, a kitchen, and a toilet; outside, for waste hauled off site and a fire protection plan mapping evacuation routes and fuels management.

The ordinance reached Tuesday’s hearing by a long route. Board workshops in 2024 and 2025 directed staff to find alternative housing types that might lower construction costs and add supply. The Planning Commission recommended the resulting draft on a 3-2 vote on November 13, 2025, and supervisors first took it up March 10, voting 4-1 to continue the hearing rather than act.

That continuance produced four revisions. Staff moved the language into the existing recreational vehicle section of the code, added an income limit, removed a three-acre minimum parcel size, and allowed the units to be rented for periods of 30 days or longer. The revised draft circulated for public comment from June 2 through July 2 and returned to the Planning Commission for a 40-day review required by state law. Foss said the commission raised no comments.

Under the income limit, occupants could have earned no more than 50 percent of area median income, a level state and federal housing agencies classify as very low income. Foss put area median income in Nevada County at about $89,882, placing the ceiling just under $45,000 for an individual. Tenants would have supplied verifiable financial records, and property owners renting to others would have signed a declaration limiting occupancy to qualifying tenants.

Dropping the acreage floor widened the ordinance considerably. Foss said roughly 10,800 developed parcels qualified under the three-acre minimum, and about 18,000 would have qualified without it. He also offered supervisors the option to adopt the ordinance as a pilot program with a 24-month sunset, under which permits issued before expiration would remain valid.

Written comment ran heavily against the revision. Foss said the county received more than 350 comments on the original ordinance and about 75 on the new draft, and that his read of the second batch put opposition at 90 to 95 percent.

Wildfire was a consistent theme in the hearing. Maureen Graber of District 1 told supervisors that recreational vehicles are highly combustible and that year-round occupancy adds cooking, heating, generators, propane, and fuel storage to parcels in a high-hazard area, undermining neighbors who had invested in defensible space. Other speakers described narrow rural roads that already strain during evacuations, septic systems sized for a single dwelling, and shallow wells vulnerable to a failed leach field.

Enforcement drew nearly as much attention. Teresa Kingsbury of District 3 noted that the staff report identified no new funding and asked the board to obtain code compliance staffing levels, caseloads, and response times before creating a class of occupancy requiring inspections every two years. “An ordinance is only as strong as its enforcement,” she said.

Then came the speakers who had spent years pressing for the change. Tom Durkin, director of the No Place to Go project, reminded the board he had asked for an ordinance permitting trailer living seven and a half years ago. “This ordinance makes it impossible,” he said, adding that his own landlord would never have agreed to a two-year renewal and periodic inspections.

Brad Summer, who said he placed his 385th trailer last weekend over about a decade of the work, told the board almost none of the families he places could satisfy the requirements and raised the prospect of a citizens’ initiative instead. One speaker took the opposite path, asking supervisors to strike the income limit rather than reject the ordinance, on the grounds that zoning regulates land use rather than the earnings of the people living on a parcel.

When the hearing closed and the item returned to the board, Tucker objected to treating a vehicle with its wheels still attached as permanent housing and questioned why unincorporated areas would absorb impacts that Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Truckee would not. He also confirmed with Foss that recreational vehicles do not count toward the county’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation, the state’s housing production target.

Supervisor Hardy Bullock of District 5 called the ordinance one increment among many housing efforts but said it had not found the balance. “I am happy to put this to bed, support a no vote,” he said, encouraging supporters to pursue a voter-driven initiative instead. “It may be up to the people.”

Supervisor Heidi Hall of District 1 argued that the standards were strict enough that she expected no more than a handful of permits countywide, and objected to what she called hyperbole about the consequences. “Clearly this is dead,” she said. “We have failed, we’re continuing to fail, our lowest income people in this community. That’s on all of us.”

Supervisor Susan Hoek of District 4 said wildfire remained decisive for her, describing a trailer in her district that burned in about two minutes, and said no property owner she spoke with was willing to spend what compliance would cost. Swarthout took responsibility for the March continuance and the compromise it was meant to produce. “I failed miserably at having us come up with a compromise for it, but you don’t know until you try,” she said.

Code Compliance Director Matt Kelly told the board that a moratorium on recreational vehicle enforcement cases, in place while the ordinance was pending, ends with Tuesday’s decision unless supervisors extend it. The existing rules on temporary occupancy remain in force.

Swarthout said she intends to bring a possible public-private partnership for a low-income recreational vehicle park to the board’s January workshop, an option Bullock and Hall both said they would consider. Two speakers told the board they intend to pursue a ballot measure.