Eugene passes stricter parking rules with focus on car-camping crackdown

Alan Torres, Eugene Register-Guard

The Eugene City Council voted 5-3 Wednesday to pass stricter parking rules focused on cracking down on car camping.

Councilors spent more than an hour debating the new rules, which include:

  • Removing the current $2.00 per hour maximum charge for on-street parking.

  • Raising the presumptive and maximum fines for certain parking violations.

  • Setting a per-day time limit in 2-hour zones, prohibiting vehicles from returning to the same 2-hour zoned block later in the day.

  • Letting the city impound vehicles that are parked in front of residences or hotels during the night three times in 90 days or blocking a mailbox.

  • Empowering parking officers (in addition to police officers) to impound vehicles for greywater dumping.

After councilors debated the rule changes, a majority said the new rules would add accountability, encourage people living in cars and RVs to find more stable housing, and bring peace-of-mind to housed residents with camping near them.

"RVs camped in people's neighborhoods and business districts downtown have become a considerable problem and a source of quite a lot of complaints," Councilor Mike Clark said. "For us to set rules about how we live together and that you can't sleep on the streets in an RV, I think is a completely reasonable one and one that we need to uphold."

Meanwhile, Councilors Lyndsie Leech, Alan Zelenka and Jennifer Yeh voted against the changes. They said the new rules were overly punitive, would hurt people who were already struggling and would replace car camping with tent camping.

"I see these code pieces more as that short-term fix that could actually have a detrimental impact over the long-term on our city," Leech said. "My worry is that because a mom with a baby in a minivan can't figure out how our code works, that they could potentially have their vehicle impounded. … I need codified protections for situations like that."

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Alan Torres covers local government for the Register-Guard. He can be reached over email at atorres@registerguard.com or on X @alanfryetorres.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Eugene passes stricter parking rules as part of car-camping crackdown

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