AB 518 defines “low‑impact camping areas” and sets minimum statewide requirements that a county must apply if it elects to authorize transient, recreational camping on private property. The law distinguishes these sites from special occupancy parks and prescribes occupancy limits, siting and sanitation rules, operator availability, tax compliance, and platform‑listing requirements.
The bill matters because it creates a predictable compliance baseline for property owners, gives counties a clear framework to register and enforce low‑impact campsites, and forces online hosting platforms to display county authorization and to delist unauthorized listings upon specified notice. That combination changes how short‑term rural lodging can scale while shifting administrative and enforcement responsibility to counties and platforms.
At a Glance
What It Does
AB 518 defines low‑impact camping areas and lays out minimum conditions—on occupancy, site layout, sanitation, fire safety, and taxes—that a private property site must meet to be treated differently than a special occupancy park. It requires counties that authorize such camping to maintain a registry, run a complaints program, and gives counties enforcement authority, while obligating online hosting platforms to display county and permit information and to remove invalid listings on notice.
Who It Affects
Rural and semi‑rural property owners who want to rent tents, yurts, or RV spots; county code and land‑use officials tasked with registration and enforcement; online hosting platforms that list temporary outdoor stays; and nearby residents concerned with nuisance, safety, or land‑use impacts.
Why It Matters
The bill creates a statewide regulatory floor that preserves local choice but standardizes key protections—sanitation, fire safety, taxes, and quiet hours. It also clarifies platform takedown mechanics and ties short‑term rural camping into existing eviction and transient tax regimes, which matters for compliance, liability, and local revenues.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
AB 518 starts by defining the terms that matter: who counts as a camper, what qualifies as a commercial lodging facility, and what the legislature means by a low‑impact camping area and a temporary sleeping accommodation (tents, yurts, RVs, etc.). The key legal effect is conditional: a site qualifies as a low‑impact camping area only if the county has enacted an ordinance authorizing such activity and the site meets the statutory requirements the law sets out.
Those statutory requirements address safety, sanitation, scale, and neighborhood protection. A qualifying site must limit stays, keep the total number of accommodations small, comply with state and local fire standards, handle human waste and trash either under local rules or via self‑contained systems, and enforce quiet hours.
The statute also imposes siting rules—distance from residences and adjoining parcels, minimum parcel size and density limits—and disqualifies sites that are effectively urban in character.The bill assigns duties to counties that opt in: establish a public registry of authorized low‑impact camping areas (including operator names, addresses, and enforcement summaries), run a complaint program to support code enforcement, require posting of permits on site, and notify the Department of Housing and Community Development of their authorization choice. Counties retain primary administrative and enforcement authority over these operations.Finally, AB 518 reaches online hosting platforms.
Hosts must include the authorizing county and any county permit or registration on listings. Platforms must show the county in listings and offer a dedicated field for permit numbers.
If a county follows specified notice steps showing a listing is unauthorized, the platform must remove the listing within a set period. The bill also clarifies that the statute does not authorize access to private land without owner permission and that existing eviction processes for special occupancy parks apply to these sites.
The Five Things You Need to Know
A qualifying low‑impact camping area is allowed only on parcels two acres or larger and is limited to no more than one temporary sleeping accommodation per acre.
The statute caps occupancy at 14 consecutive nights per camper and 28 nights per calendar year per camper.
A low‑impact site may include no more than nine temporary sleeping accommodations total and no more than four concurrently occupied recreational vehicles.
Listings must show the authorizing county and a dedicated field for any county license, permit, or registration; a platform must remove an unauthorized listing within seven days after the county provides specified written notice and documentation.
Sites must be sited at least 200 feet from any offsite residence and at least 30 feet from any adjoining property or road, and sites within urbanized areas or those mostly adjoining urban parcels are disqualified.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Definitions and scope
This section creates the operative vocabulary—‘camper,’ ‘low‑impact camping area,’ ‘temporary sleeping accommodation,’ ‘online hosting platform,’ and cross‑references to the Civil Code and Vehicle Code definitions for hotels and RVs. Practically, the definitions determine which properties and transactions fall inside the statute’s rules and which remain subject to other lodging or park regulations.
Conditions for a site to qualify as low‑impact camping
This is the compliance core: it lists the mandatory conditions a site must meet to be treated under this regime rather than as a special occupancy park. It bundles occupancy limits, maximum site counts, fire and sanitation compliance, trash controls, quiet hours, parking prohibitions, siting and density restrictions, and an exclusion for urbanized parcels. For operators, this creates a checklist that touches permitting, infrastructure (toilets/sewage), site planning, and neighbor buffers; failure on any item means the site cannot claim the statute’s benefits.
County registry, complaint program, and enforcement authority
Counties that authorize low‑impact camping must create and maintain a registry with operator and site details, track code enforcement actions, set up a complaints pathway, and require permit postings on site. The county, not the state, has administrative and enforcement authority and must notify the Department of Housing and Community Development that it has opted in. That places operational responsibility—and cost—largely at the county level while giving counties a tool to monitor and police activity.
Host and platform listing requirements and takedown process
Owners must include the authorizing county and any county permit number in platform postings; platforms must display the county and a dedicated permit field. If a county follows a specified notice procedure—mailing the property owner, supplying the listing URL, operator name (if known), the county notice of violation, and ordinance citation—the platform must remove the listing within seven days. This section creates an administrative takedown pathway that limits platform discretion but requires counties to produce and deliver particular documentation before removal.
Limits, optional adoption, and eviction rules
The law makes clear it does not permit trespass and does not compel counties to authorize low‑impact camping; it sets a floor, not a mandate. It also ties eviction procedures for special occupancy parks to low‑impact camping areas, meaning existing state and local eviction rules and protections carry over. That linkage affects how and when occupants can be removed and how landlords or operators pursue enforcement.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Housing across all five countries.
Explore Housing in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Rural and semi‑rural property owners who can host short‑term campers — they gain a clear statutory pathway and predictable baseline requirements to operate without being classified as special occupancy parks.
- Recreational campers seeking dispersed, private‑land options — the law can expand legal, regulated choices for short‑term outdoor stays with mandated sanitation and quiet‑hour protections.
- Counties that elect to authorize campsites — they gain a template to capture transient occupancy tax revenue, regulate impacts through a registry and complaint program, and control local standards rather than leaving hosts unregulated.
Who Bears the Cost
- Property owners/operators — they must meet sanitation, fire, siting, and permit posting requirements and bear infrastructure and compliance costs to qualify and to remain listed on platforms.
- County governments — counties that opt in take on registry creation, complaint handling, code enforcement, and administrative duties without dedicated state funding in the text.
- Online hosting platforms — they must add fields and display authorizing county data, implement a takedown process that complies with the statute’s evidentiary checklist, and act within the seven‑day removal window, which carries operational and legal risks.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
AB 518 balances two legitimate aims—opening private rural land to regulated, transient outdoor recreation and protecting neighborhoods, public health, and local land‑use planning—but it forces counties and platforms to shoulder the practical burdens of verification and enforcement; the central tension is whether expanding access to short‑term outdoor stays is worth the administrative, safety, and neighborhood trade‑offs that come with policing and standardizing a new lodging category.
AB 518 establishes a detailed minimum compliance template, but it leaves significant implementation discretion to counties. That design preserves local control but creates variability: a host operating legally in one county could be unauthorized in a neighboring county with different zoning or permit rules.
It also shifts much of the enforcement burden to counties; the statute does not appropriate funds for registry or enforcement work, which may slow implementation or concentrate activity in better‑resourced counties.
The platform takedown mechanism simplifies removal for counties but raises verification and liability questions. The statute requires counties to send specific information to trigger a platform removal, but it does not create a central state database of authorized permits or mandate how platforms must verify submitted permit numbers beyond displaying them.
That gap leaves open the potential for false or stale listings to persist or for platforms to face disputes about whether they complied with the seven‑day removal obligation. The law also leaves several operational details ambiguous—insurance and liability expectations for hosts, the standard for proving fire‑safety compliance, and how counties should verify the 200‑foot distance to offsite residences in practice.
Finally, tying low‑impact camping to the special occupancy park eviction framework protects property owners’ ability to remove occupants but could create friction with local housing priorities where short‑term stays compete with longer‑term housing supply. The density, parcel size, and urban exclusion tests are blunt tools that will leave borderline cases for local interpretation and potential litigation.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.