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Astoria council weighs changes to camping ordinance after livability briefing
Summary
City staff and service providers told the council that the current time/place/manner camping code and citation-based enforcement are straining staff and not resolving long-standing behaviors; council asked staff to study penalty escalation, court processing, private-property options and a sanctioned campsite and return with recommendations.
Astoria City staff presented the council with a report on the city's livability response and the current camping ordinance, saying the city has discussed and revised its rules since 2018 and adopted the present code in 2022. "This is gonna be a conversation regarding, our livability response and camping ordinance for the city of Astoria," staff said at the outset of the presentation, outlining a timeline of actions from 2022 through meetings this year with courts and community partners.
Staff framed the ordinance as a time/place/manner rule that limits camping to mapped areas (prohibiting camping outside those areas from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.), limits individual footprints to 50 square feet and relies on municipal citations as the primary enforcement tool. Assistant to the city manager Ryan Quigley told the council the staff presentation was intended to clarify available resources and compliance challenges; service providers in the room detailed shelter and outreach capacity and said citation-based enforcement had not solved the problem for the most service-resistant people.
The council's conversation ranged across options for pairing enforcement with alternatives: progressive penalties that escalate after repeated citations, a deflection or treatment pathway through county programs, use of the ordinance's temporary private-property camping provisions or a sanctioned campsite/tiny-home village modeled on Seaside's "Stepping Stones." Ryan Quigley summarized the near-term follow-ups staff should study and return with: penalty escalation, circuit-court processing options, a private-property/safe-parking outreach approach, and a feasibility study for a concentrated sanctioned site. The council did not take a formal vote at the work session but asked staff to develop drafts and cost estimates for future work sessions.
