Commerce City, CO Homelessness & Encampment Rules: Sit-Lie Rules (2026)

Section 12-6001 of the Commerce City Revised Municipal Code prohibits intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly obstructing a highway, street, sidewalk, railway, waterway, building entrance, elevator, aisle, stairway, or hallway that the public or a substantial group of the public can access, or any other place used for the passage of persons, vehicles, or conveyances, regardless of whether the obstruction comes from one person's acts alone or combined with others. The section is not written as a sit-lie ordinance and does not single out sitting or lying down; it reaches any conduct, standing, sitting, lying, or leaving belongings, that blocks a passage a member of the public is entitled to use.

A second, separately chargeable clause makes it unlawful to disobey a reasonable request or order to move issued by a police officer, firefighter, or a person known to have authority over the premises, when that order is meant to prevent an obstruction or to maintain public safety by dispersing people gathered near a fire, riot, or other hazard. In practice, Commerce City Police use this order-to-move clause against a person or encampment blocking a sidewalk or building entrance: an officer directs the person to clear the passage, and refusal to comply is itself the chargeable offense, separate from the underlying obstruction.

Neither this section nor the Code's homelessness-adjacent provisions elsewhere in Chapter 12 impose a sidewalk curfew tied to sitting or lying; Commerce City instead relies on this general obstruction and order-to-move language, together with a separate unauthorized-camping restriction on public property that carries its own prior-notice requirement, to address encampments and blocked walkways citywide.