The draft of the proposed alternative housing ordinance for Nevada County was released Aug. 20, 2025. The first public workshop is scheduled for 6 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 9, in the Grass Valley Veterans Memorial Hall.
The No Place To Go Project supports the ordinance, butwe have Amendments. These Talking Points with proposed Amendments are designed to make you knowledgeable and persuasive in your conversations with friends and neighbors, in your letters to the editor and op-ed essays, in your written comments to the county, and in your speaking at the upcoming public hearings. Choose the points that most resonate with you. If you think of a point we’ve missed, please share it with us on ourContact Uspage.
Please remember, we are the good guys. We are polite, persistent and relentlessly reasonable. We don’t yell, threaten or insult. We offer solutions, not complaints. We work - not fight - with people who oppose us.
THE CASE FOR ALTERNATIVE HOUSING
We have a homeless/housing emergency. Redefining legal housing to include RVs & trailers just makes sense. It might not be the ideal solution, but it is the best solution for right here, right now, to help our unhoused citizens.
People who have private property and the right hookups can rent space to people who have their own RV/trailers.
According to state Housing and Community Development, redefining housing to include RVs & trailers will improve the county’s Prohousing Designation, making Nevada County eligible for funding to build more affordable housing units.
Nevada County can mitigate the homeless/housing crisis by making RVs & trailers safe, available and affordable without having to build anything or spend millions of dollars.
Working-age adults coming out of homelessness need RVs & trailers as first-step, transitional housing on their way to better housing once they get stabilized.
RVs & trailers are the first chance for unhoused people to get back inside, and the last chance for people at-risk of becoming homeless, including older and disabled people on fixed incomes who can’t afford any other housing.
Currently, RVs & trailers are the only truly affordable housing out there that doesn’t require government subsidy (our taxpayer dollars) to be affordable.
This ordinance not only creates new housing, it legalizes existing illegal housing. We estimate more than a thousand people already live in alternative housing units.
Renting homes on wheels on private property is what housing for the people by the people is all about.
ALTERNATIVE HOUSING ORDINANCE
The alternative housing ordinance should reflect the same rules as the already established tiny homes on wheels ordinance.
The alternative housing ordinance must not be so expensive and restrictive that hardly anybody can qualify.
It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to write an ordinance that is only housing on paper and not on the ground.
FIRE SAFETY
Alternative housing lowers the risk of a homeless campfire burning down the whole community.
Because of the potential for dangerous traffic congestion or blockage, moving a tiny home on wheels or other homes on wheels during a wildfire evacuation warning or order must be prohibited with a severe penalty for violation.
Property owners renting an AltDU to responsible people on the same basis as any other rental transaction could use the extra income to pay for fire insurance.
Getting people out of the woods is in everybody’s best interests.
WATER & SEPTIC
Each AltDU must have code or code-equivalent septic and water management approved by Environmental Health.
If an AltDU is given a three-year grace period to build a septic system or dig a well, the landlord and tenant must provide to the Nevada County Environmental Health Department proof of a signed contract with a water delivery company and/or septic pumping company to remove biohazardous wastewater (aka blackwater).
CODE COMPLIANCE
So many people already live in trailers that code enforcement must remain complaint-driven.
Complaints must have merit. The Code Compliance Director must exercise his authority to reject malicious or meritless complaints.
Code Compliance’s priority should be keeping people where they are and assisting them to come into compliance if necessary. Forced relocation/evictions should be a last resort.
Code Compliance must report the demographics but not the identiof all the individuals who are forced to relocate.
NOT IN MY BACKYARD
Most opposition to the alternative housing ordinance is based on fear, ignorance and prejudice.
People are afraid of who and what they don’t know. Landlords and tenants must establish friendly relations with their neighbors.
We must work with people who oppose us, not fight them. We must acknowledge their fears and concerns. They need to feel heard and understood first before they will listen to us. Done respectfully, we can change some minds.
No one has the right to deny other people housing.
HOUSING IS HEALTHCARE
Housing is healthcare. People in housing have far fewer medical and mental problems than people living in the wild. This saves taxpayers money.
Legalizing RVs & trailers would relieve tenants and landlords of unnecessary stress that can lead to anxiety, paranoia and depression.
People must not live in fear for the “crime” of living in desperation (illegal) housing when that is the only housing they could find or afford.
AltDUs provide shelter from the storm.
DATA POINTS
According to the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness (CASPEH) from the University of California, San Francisco, 63% of homeless people became homeless because of the lack of affordable and available housing.
Although public perception is higher, a survey of credible studies indicates just 25% to 37% of homeless people are regular drug users.
International studies estimate 67% of homeless people suffer some form of mental illness, ranging from severely disabling conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorders to quality-of-life conditions like depression and anxiety, which are often caused by homelessness.
RIGHTS & WRONGS
A person’s property rights end at his property line. No one is forcing him to put an AltDU on his property, but he cannot prevent his neighbor from exercising her right to rent one out on her property.
The regulations must not be so restrictive and expensive that nobody can comply. Overly stringent regs would become nothing more than housing on paper – a waste of staff time and taxpayer money.
Resisting RVs & trailers is implicit class discrimination. Just because people live in AltDUs because that’s all they could find or afford doesn’t automatically make them “trailer trash.”
It is an insidious, persistent myth that homeless people will come here if the ordinance passes. The fact is that they’re already here. We are simply trying to create affordable housing for those unhoused people who just need housing they can afford.
For people who can’t find housing and for people who are not housing-ready, we must at least establish safe places for folks to camp or park with, at minimum, toilet facilities and garbage cans.
