The Paradise Town Council quietly voted Tuesday to extend a 2018 urgency ordinance allowing Camp Fire survivors to live in RVs while they recover or rebuild.
This means fire survivors now have one more year to live in trailers full-time on their properties in the town.
The ordinance was originally set to end in 2020, but the town kept extending it so people could stay longer. Tuesday’s vote is the fourth such extension.
The town council and the Butte County Board of Supervisors first passed ordinances around RV living following the 2018 Camp Fire that displaced more than 50,000 people in and around Paradise. Butte County has also done the same for the Bear Fire or North Complex, and so have other counties and cities in the North State, including Shasta County.
Previous extensions in Paradise were accompanied by impassioned speeches from fire survivors. This week’s vote came with no public comment and little discussion.
Tony Lindsey, community development director of building and code enforcement in Paradise, said staff at his departments felt households still living in RVs wouldn’t have enough time to move by this April.
“We're coming up on less than four months, right? How do we start notifying people that the urgency ordinance was going to end?” Lindsey said.
He said at its inception, nearly 600 RVs were permitted under the urgency ordinance. Today, there are just 145 RVs with permits under the ordinance, of which only 58 are occupied.
He said the extension will help those 58 households find somewhere to live.
“That was really the intent of the urgency ordinance was to give our citizens a chance to live in their RVs, live on their parcels and transition to permanent housing,” Lindsey said.
Staff also recommended other changes, which the council voted in as part of the new extension ordinance: All permitted trailers and RVs must have utility hookups, including water, sewage disposal, and electricity. And, unoccupied trailers on residential lots will have their temporary use permits revoked and will need to be moved by this April.
