Chino Hills, CA Homelessness & Encampment Rules: Encampment Sanitation (2026)

Chino Hills Municipal Code § 12.32.160 flatly prohibits erecting or maintaining any hut, shanty, tent, tarpaulin, or other temporary structure anywhere in the city's designated City-Owned Open Space, the citywide network of preserved habitat and City-maintained natural land that sits outside city parks and public rights-of-way. The ban applies to everyone; there is no permit process that authorizes an overnight structure, and the prohibition sits alongside the open-space hours restriction at § 12.32.020, which closes City-Owned Open Space thirty minutes after sunset and bars any person from remaining there until thirty minutes before sunrise unless a special event permit under Chapter 12.36 has been issued.

Together the two sections mean a person cannot legally set up a tent after dark or stay in the open space overnight even without one. The same chapter addresses the sanitation side of an encampment separately: § 12.32.090 makes it unlawful to urinate, defecate, wash dishes, or dispose of garbage, cans, bottles, biohazardous material or other refuse anywhere in the open space, with disposal permitted only in the waste receptacles the City provides. Read together, Chapter 12.32 gives Chino Hills code enforcement a direct tool against a developing encampment: the structure itself is unlawful under § 12.32.160, staying past closing hours is separately unlawful under § 12.32.020, and any resulting waste violates § 12.32.090.

City personnel, and personnel from animal control, law enforcement, or fire agencies acting in their official duties, are exempted from these open-space restrictions under § 12.32.240's duty-to-comply framework.