Charleston, SC Parking Rules: Overnight Parking (2026)

1 and last amended by Ordinance No. 2010-111 in July 2010, sits in Article VIII, Division 1 of the traffic chapter alongside Charleston's general stopping, standing, and parking rules. It does not set a citywide overnight parking hour limit for ordinary vehicles; instead it singles out campers, vans, buses, and other motor vehicles used to camp, sleep, lodge, or reside on a public street, in a park, or in any public place within city limits. A vehicle merely parked overnight on a residential street without occupancy is governed by the surrounding sections of Article VIII (curb markings, twenty-foot truck limits, driveway clearance), not this camping ban.

The only carve-out is administrative: the city's special events committee may authorize vehicle camping for a specific event, but only if the activity does not constitute a nuisance, adequate safety measures protect campers, cleanliness of the surrounding area is preserved, and adverse community impacts are minimized. Absent that written authorization, sleeping or residing in any camper, van, bus, or other motor vehicle on city-owned or public property is a violation regardless of how briefly the vehicle is parked. Enforcement runs through the same citation process used for the rest of Article VIII: a police officer or code enforcement officer may issue a traffic citation under section 19-291, and a vehicle can be flagged for booting or towing once it accumulates unpaid citations under section 19-292.

Because section 19-238 carries no separate dollar fine of its own, violations fall back on the Code's general penalty provision, section 1-16, referenced throughout Chapter 19 and Chapter 21 as the default enforcement mechanism for offenses that do not state their own fine schedule.