The Brown County Plan Commission is looking for solutions to a growing number of complaints that people are living in campers and RVs.
RVs and campers are not recognized by local ordinance or in state law as structures “for dwelling” or that are “fit for habitation.” Because of this, the county’s unwritten policy is that campers are allowed only for short periods.
The county health department is typically the government arm that addresses this issue because of waste disposal, according to Erin Heller-Crowell, its assistant environmental health specialist.
“When you have a camper and you're disposing of your waste illegally and it goes into other people's property, that's when we get the complaints,” she said.
Heller-Crowell said she goes out with another health employee to inspect when a complaint is made. They can ask someone to vacate the property. If they don’t do that it becomes a civil matter for courts, which is time-consuming and costly.
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“The last thing we want to do is keep people out of their homes,” Heller-Crowell said. “We wouldn't care if, from our perspective, as long as waste was going into some kind of disposal system.”
Plan commissioner Randy Jones said the county hasn’t defined what qualifies as a temporary or extended stay for RVs and campers. But the county’s approach so far has been one or two weeks.
During its Tuesday meeting, the commission took public comment on the issue.
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James Thompson told commissioners he stayed in a camper on his property in Brown County for a month last year, when a county employee told him to move.
“Older people are getting booted out of homes because costs are rising,” he said. “They're going to mobile homes across the country. This is no exception here in Brown County, and so we're going to have to be dealt with it.”
Thompson wants to know whether he can leave his RV on the property for periods when he’s not living there.
“I'd like to keep coming back,” he said. “But if I'm told ‘you can't stay there, you can't keep this camper there more than eight months out of the year, we're going to come haul it away.’ On my own private property, that's concerning to me.”
The county plan commission debated back and forth, acknowledging that kicking someone out of their living situation is problematic. Commissioner Andy Voils said he knows people who have needed to stay in a camper or RV before.
“I don't know that anybody aspires to go live in a camper in the woods,” Voils said. “I think it would be safe to say that it wasn't their option A. So, limiting someone from doing that and trying to get out of that situation, I have a thick issue with. I don't think it's an issue that needs zero regulation, but it needs like point-zero-zero-one, regulation.”
The plan commission didn’t vote to pass an ordinance or policy and said it would reconvene after reviewing information gathered from the public.
