‘It’s just craziness’: As Santa Cruz Mountains wildfire season begins, proposed camping policy unnerves residents 

Nancy Kille knows where not to look. Still, she steps off to the side of her ridgetop property in Bonny Doon and looks anyway. A sloping landscape once filled with winding oaks and skyward redwood trees is now mostly charred trunks. The sight triggers memories of August 2020, when she evacuated her home for 76 days while the CZU wildfire torched hers and more than 900 other Santa Cruz Mountains homes.

Kille also knows she is among the lucky ones. Out of those nearly thousand land owners, she represents the fraction who have rebuilt, returning to her property’s sweeping vista of the Santa Cruz Mountains and a shadow of the burn scar.

Fire season brings heightened alertness and anxiety to this region. In the week following June 15, eight fires sparked throughout the state, including the Point fire in Sonoma, and have burned nearly 43,000 acres. However, this summer has brought Kille and her neighbors a new kind of local fire anxiety.

On Tuesday, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take its first vote on a policy fire officials say would likely increase the risk of wildfires in the county. It would allow private owners of large properties to open up recreational campsites on their land, known as a low-impact camping area (LICA). Kille and many of her neighbors vehemently oppose the program, and the county’s planning commission voted May 8 to reject it. Yet, the county’s community development department is recommending supervisors pass the new ordinance, originally proposed by District 2 Supervisor Zach Friend. Hipcamp, the San-Francisco-based company that operates an online platform connecting prospective campers to private properties where they can stay — in the spirit of Airbnb — has also made a strong lobbying push. 

The controversial proposal also comes to a vote in a moment when thousands of rural county residents are being dropped by their insurers due to fire risk, and only two weeks after the county struggled through approving what Friend called a “survival-based budget.” The process of balancing that budget was strained by the nearly $100 million in debt the county will take out for disaster-related repairs, the result of an achingly slow repayment by the federal government for federally declared disaster costs stretching back to 2017, including the 2020 CZU fire.  

“This really scares us,” Kille said. “There is so much PTSD.”

Friend first proposed the LICA ordinance in November, asking county staff to draw up an ordinance that allows rural property owners to open up their lands for private campsites. 

“Expanding outdoor and travel opportunities for all, especially with the loss of campgrounds from the [recent disasters], is the equitable thing to do,” Friend said in an email. “Access to the natural wonders of our community shouldn’t be limited to just those with means and small camping opportunities expands access in ways that other options do not.”

Currently, rural land owners can host a single campsite on their property; to expand requires a fairly onerous process through the state’s Special Occupancy Parks Act, which involves permits from the state, the county, a public hearing and a California environmental protection act review. 

The local LICA ordinance is aimed to work in concert with Senate Bill 620, a state bill still moving through the committee process. LICA would allow property owners with 5 or more acres to open up private campsites at a density of one site per acre, four campers per site, with a maximum 36 total campers on a property. The ordinance would prohibit campsites on properties in very high fire hazard zones — designations set by the U.S. Forest Service — and broadly restrict campfires and barbecues. Campsite properties would need a site manager available to campers 24 hours per day and within a 15-mile radius of the property. Although campsites would be required to offer some septic sanitation such as portable toilets, the properties would not need to have cellphone service or water infrastructure. Wary of private campsites becoming more permanent living situations, the county included a clause that prohibits stays of more than 14 consecutive days; no single person would be allowed to set up camp at the same site more than 28 days in a year. 

A county analysis showed nearly 1,900 properties could be eligible to host a low-impact campground on their property. 

Mike DeMars, fire marshal for the Central Fire District, which serves Mid-County from Rio Del Mar to Twin Lakes and up into the Soquel hills, said he would want to see something like LICA paired with requirements that campsite properties provide 10,000-gallon water tanks or a water connection, the same rules placed on new rural development throughout the county. 

“We were not very enthused when we caught wind of the ordinance,” DeMars said. “We think they missed a few key things when it comes to fire life and safety issues.” 

Ian Jones, a fire captain at the Felton Fire Protection District, said he is concerned that more campsites would inflate service calls without any additional resources for the county’s already stretched rural fire departments. Felton Fire is already reeling from receiving more calls than it can handle.

“Fire service in the San Lorenzo Valley and other rural areas are already stretched pretty thin,” Jones said. “If we are going to keep adding sources of call volume without augmenting the service, it’s eventually going to come to a head.” 

Sempervirens Fund, the Santa Cruz-based environmental nonprofit dedicated to preserving redwood forests, recommended the county cap the number of campsite permits at 150 countywide. In a May 7 letter to the county’s planning commission, Rachel Dann, Sempervirens’ government relations director (and a City of Santa Cruz planning commissioner), said a permit cap would “drastically” reduce “the impacts to natural resources and potential fire danger.”

For Friend, by regulating what is largely an unregulated activity in the county, the LICA ordinance could work to reduce fire risk from rural campsites. Nearly 30 tent and recreational vehicle private-property campsites are listed as available on Hipcamp, but it is unclear how many of these have permits with the county and the state. This ordinance, Friend said, would create a formal approval process that requires signoff from fire professionals before releasing a permit.

“​​Currently, there is no input or review process for fire [risk] associated with these campsites even though they are already occurring throughout the county,” Friend said in an email. “If some version of the ordinance isn’t enacted then the ability for oversight, review and input from fire and every other public safety and regulatory agency becomes much more difficult since there wouldn’t be a permitting or review process. That’s the current state we are in and it seems like we should move toward a process where input is possible.”

In formalizing the permitting process, the county would also get to collect hotel taxes on the nightly stays. The county has not done an economic impact analysis on the program, but county spokesperson Jason Hoppin said it is not expected to produce significant tax revenue. 

Hipcamp, the for-profit company that runs the online camping matching network, has used its Camping Advocacy Network lobbying arm to push hard for the approval of SB 620 in Sacramento. It has also launched a campaign to gather support for the local program. In a June 11 email, the Hipcamp team asked residents and supporters to write and call the county supervisors, and to attend Tuesday’s meeting.  

“Unfortunately, a small but vocal group of residents is asking the board to vote against camping on private property, so this meeting is a crucial time to get involved and advocate in support of low impact camping,” the email read. “If the ordinance does not pass, you will not be able to reopen in Santa Cruz County – so use your voice and get involved!” 

District 3 Supervisor Justin Cummings, whose district reaches into the North Coast and Bonny Doon, said rural residents in his district were “freaked out” by the proposal. 

“There are a lot of people who have been dropped by their insurance companies lately because of fire and now you introduce something like this in the area,” Cummings said. “There hasn’t been extensive community engagement around this. Even if only propane stoves are allowed, people are still freaked out. If we’re going to consider it, there needs to be more broad public input.”

The CZU fire swallowed Steve and Chris Homan’s Bonny Doon home, which they built in 1975. Four years later, the Homans are back on their property with a fire-hardened home thanks to State Farm insurance, but Steve said the insurer plans to drop the Homans by the end of the year as the Santa Cruz Mountains have become too costly to insure against fires. 

“If the supervisors approve this LICA ordinance, it will be the end of fire insurance in the Santa Cruz Mountains, like forever,” Steve Homan said. “We’ve done everything we can to be safe, and now the county is going to turn loose these campsites, and think they’re going to be able to prohibit campfires? It’s just craziness.” 

Many property owners, however, see the ordinance as an easy way to capitalize on their properties without having to build an accessory dwelling unit or commit to significant construction. Many of the public comments submitted over the past several months even asked the planning commission and supervisors to reduce the required acreage from 5 acres in order to allow smaller property owners to rent out campsites. 

For Kille, it’s unfair for the county to approve something that would increase fire risk. 

“Until you’ve been awakened at 1:30 in the morning with a call saying, ‘Get out now, the fire’s coming,’ and you leave with ash coming down, not knowing if you’re coming back to a house, or even if you’re gonna make it out, or if you’ll wind up like someone from paradise, you have no right to impose this on us,” Kille said. 

The board of supervisors will meet on Tuesday at 9 a.m. If the ordinance is approved on the first vote, the supervisors will come back on Aug. 13 for a final adoption.

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FOR THE RECORD: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated from which fire hazard zones LICAs would be prohibited, and how many parcels could be eligible to host a LICA.

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