It's Illegal to Live in an RV on Your Property in These US States | Hacker News Reader

It's Illegal to Live in an RV on Your Property in These US States

jalopnik.com

17 pointsrntn25 comments

I hate articles like these. Every city and township has their own set of ordinances that makes generalizations like this not possible. They might define RV differently, or they might only allow it for a limited amount of time, or only during the building of the dwelling. I've looked a lot in Michigan, and it's definitely possible in some places.

You have to go to the source yourself, per city, and figure it out. And the ordinances change over the years too. Something I wish someone would solve with an LLM and the mountain of data companies like LexisNexis have on local ordinances.

It's even more complicated when HOA rules are included, and those can be impossible to find on the open internet. Many neighborhoods effectively ban RVs anywhere except inside a garage, so even having a full house may not be enough.

I don't think it's unreasonable to demand that if you are going to live on your property in your RV, that you also have a sewer/septic hookup for disposal of your grey water and sewage. That stuff should not be going down a storm drain, which is where it often seems to go.

Then the laws should be around disposing of grey water, not around living in an RV. A lot of houses around my area have sum pumps from rain water connected to the town sewage which is illegal. But we don't make it illegal to live in houses...

Get an RV and park it in NYC, live in the heart of the city rent free! You'll need to move it on street cleaning days but since you live in it you can wait and get the best parking spot.

Fuck those states and fuck everywhere that criminalizes poverty and tries to control people's personal choices. I lived in a van for 9 years.

Where did your sewage water go during these 9 years ?

Enough of this carelessness and the answer becomes "the sidewalk" like you're seeing in southern California.

You either have to turn people away or let them figure out how to live but the one foot in/one foot out situation where everyone is welcome but no one is actually allowed to do anything quickly turns your town into something that looks more like a rural Indian village.

California is like this. I think its stupid.

From the article:

> The states that have said "absolutely not" to permanently living in an RV are Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan, and Delaware. In most every other state, it's going to come down to the individual laws of the county and sometimes even the city you're in.

And even that's wrong. There are places in Michigan where I've seen it allowed, either in local ordinances or de-facto

There is a road in SF that is a whole bunch of poorly looking RVs one after another for a mile or two down.

Yeah it's like that because of rules like this. No one can do anything except live in RVs because if houses are built they have to be done perfectly in a way the whole town has to be happy with.

Just imagine you aren't the only person who's health, safety, and "freedom" is under consideration and it should be clear why the majority of people would prefer those rules be in place.

This isn't about health and safety. It's the same kind of zoning NIMBYism that prevents building/living in an apartment, condo, or manufactured housing on your own property.

I have trouble escaping the idea that the schmucks that run muni's are all competing with each other to be more upscale than each other. And mostly that devolves into policies to 'keep the riff raff out'. My ex brother in law used to drive his work truck when visiting his sister and the HOA started threatening to fine her.

If they own the land I don’t see how other people would be affected unless they are violating some other laws which could be enforced separately from the RV question (e.g. trash on property, whatever else you are thinking of).

The main idea is that it negatively impacts their property values, because a home is not a home in a lot of places in the US. A home is the largest financial investment most will make in their lifetime.

There's tons of crazy stuff a neighbor could do to affect property values, why single this out specifically for that reason? A clean RV sitting on property is a lot less bad than building a mountain of tires in your front yard or having 40 dogs (random examples)

I'm not saying I agree with it or don't, I'm saying that's the common reason you'll hear from any of the HOA types, real estate developers / appraisers, etc.

Ah got it, yeah fair enough that is probably the most common reason for it that I've heard too

Or a tent since you might as well not invest a ton into what you're doing as it's illegal.

It’s a matter of land use and land price.

States / cities need land for agriculture and wilderness. So they created zoning which says what land is for homes and what land is not for homes.

Obviously, they’re not the same price, so people are tempted to buy some farmland and put an RV on it.

But if you buy a land that’s zoned for agriculture and park a huge RV on it that’s basically a house on wheels, well then there is a good chance you’re not going to farm the land, hence mooting the original reason for zoning.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to qualify RV as permanent dwellings given the amount of Americans who permanently live in one.

Whether states and cities should have control over the land is debatable, sure, but personally I find it makes sense.

This isn't the only case though. If I go buy land in a rural area where a home previously burned down and I want to just take my existing trailer and hook it up to the septic and well (from the burned down house), I can't do that most places. It'd be fine to be strict about garbage disposal, etc. (I personally think there should be severe restrictions and penalties around septic stuff since that can pollute other people's wells), but if someone only has enough money for the land and not the house I don't see why we need to restrict people from living in the RV while saving for the house.

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