Legalities

Okay I am from Santa Cruz ca. County states that one can camp on ones property for up to 3 months out of the year. I am assuming this is for lots outside city limits. If this is true you can legally park your tiny home on your property and live in it for 3 months. My question is how do they prove that you have exceed your stay? I know this county does not have the resources to track your daily usage. Lets say you get a letter from the department of make you sad. Say hey come on by this weekend. Meanwhile you have already moved your house somewhere else. They won't investigate a complaint twice after it has been investigated. I think the county won't care unless it gets really popular in which case they will find a way to bring these tiny villages into compliance. Remember be a better steward than they would and keep your sh.$t clean and things will be easier. Also it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Remember we are all slightly partial some sort of soft civil disobedience. I have no problem taking advantage of loopholes and stretching the rules if I considered what I am doing to be better than what the building department expects. Any thoughts?

Find 3 other nearby folks in the same situation and caravan from one lot to the next every three months?

Most likely it would take years to catch you unless some nosy neighbor rats you out. Then if officialdom comes knocking, you can always say you don't live there, just camp occasionally. I'd be blessing my neighbors with eggs and fresh produce on a regular basis. And hoping some dot.com kabillionaire with a suburban fantasy of tidy pastoral ease doesn't buy in next to me.

Anybody else this seems like one of the issues holding back the movement so why can't we just do as mentioned above?

I'm not sure how the law is worded but I would assume if you have more than one piece of property that you could camp on each piece for 3 months. If that is the case you could potentially divide the property and have each titles different such as:

1. Me
2. My wife
3. My self and my wife
4. My LLC that i use to sell anything produced on above properties

My point is that tiny houses on your own property would be so hard to enforce that there is no reason that one cannot just go for it. No inspector is going to tell you can't live in your tiny home because you can just move and it is no longer an issue.

I just got back from Costa Rica where I was filming a permaculture design course and you could only stay in that country for 3 months with a tourist visa without heading over to Nicaragua or Panama or flying out of country to reset the visa.

It's kind of odd that Americans in their own country looking to live mobile and small experience the same issues.