Comment by jaredklewis
17 days ago
I think you’re just confused.
There is no place in the world that is zoned for homeless encampments. Zoning is stuff like residential, commercial, industrial, mixed use, and so on. If you are talking about homeless encampments, it’s not a zoning discussion.
I don’t support homeless encampments. Out here where I live in California they tend to be on public land like parks. But wherever they are, there should be laws, enforcement mechanisms, and social support to deal with them. But none of those things have anything to do with zoning.
I think you are confused. Zoning is not words, zoning is a set of regulations. There is no zoning for an Indian restaurant yet you can open one in a commercial lot and can't in a residential or agricultural. Same with homeless camps: there is no specific zoning for a homeless camp only but they are much easier to keep in commercial lots than residential, where it will immediately run into occupancy limits, impervious cover, trash and other restrictions.
Where do you live? Where I live, the overnight occupancy limit for commercial zoning is 0 people, so (at least here) your comment makes no sense. I think commercial zoning that allows anyone to live on the property is basically rare. So if you live in a weird place where its ok for people to live on commercial zoned property, then I agree, that is super weird. But if not, then your issue is just enforcement. In which case, yea I agree, laws should be enforced, but again that has nothing to do with zoning.
I doubt very much there is any place in the US where overnight occupancy is 0 for a commercial property. Where I live you can have a 24 hour business. Living in commercial property is forbidden, but what exactly is living is up to the code officer. In my case the officer decided that homeless did not live there but just visited the business.
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