Shasta County, CA Homelessness & Encampment Rules: Encampment Sanitation (2026)

52 of the Shasta County Code, adopted by Ordinance 98-6 and amended by Ordinance No. 2019-01, governs house courts, tent camps and campsites countywide. 040(A) makes it unlawful to build, occupy or reside in a campsite, tent camp or house court without the written permission of the landowner; absent that permission the site is legally a squatter camp. Subsection (B) goes further and bars camping outright, even with landowner consent, in two defined areas: public property along the Keswick Reservoir Rails-to-Trails extension of the Redding Sacramento River Trail, and in or upon any public building, bridge or structure in the unincorporated county.

Subsection (C) requires anyone camping with written permission to keep that permission on their person at the campsite; failing to produce it is treated as unlawful camping, and the burden falls on the camper to prove permission existed. The county added subsection (D) by Ordinance No. 2019-01 in 2019: the whole section shall not apply and shall not be enforceable against a person on public property when there is no available overnight shelter, defined as a free public or private shelter space. A shelter is not available if it is at capacity, the person has exhausted stay limits, faces a return-after-leaving restriction, misses an arrival-time window, or would have to accept a religious observance requirement; refusing shelter for intoxication, drug use or disruptive behavior does not revive the exception. 030.