Car camping is now a crime in Colorado Springs
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — On Tuesday morning, Colorado Springs’ City Council passed an ordinance in a 7-2 vote officially outlawing car camping, or living in a car.
“The main issue is… it’s [homelessness] being more seen and more seen and more seen all the time,” said David Leinweber, a city council member who voted in favor of the ordinance.
The new ordinance consolidates previous laws into one code and clarifies that “vehicle camping” is unlawful. People found in violation of the new ordinance will first receive a warning and later can be penalized with jail for up to 10 days, a fine of up to $300 and/or probation.
City Council member Dave Donelson created the proposal after receiving emails from residents complaining about people living in their cars outside of their homes, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Donelson argued at Tuesday morning’s meetings that car camping negatively impacts the environment because of public defecation and littering outside of the vehicles where people live.
A 2025 Point in Time survey — an annual report of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January and widely considered an undercount — found 1,745 people experiencing homelessness in El Paso County, the highest number ever recorded locally. Veterans made up 11% of the unhoused population.
The report also found that in 2025 El Paso County needed 518 more emergency shelter or transitional housing beds to shelter every person experiencing homelessness when the survey was conducted.
The bed shortage is made worse by the fact that Colorado Springs paused its housing voucher program last year at the direction of the federal government, a move that left nearly 3,000 people who applied for Section 8 housing in limbo.
“I’d like to put them [City Council members] in my shoes for a month and see how they like being told they can’t stay in their car when you don’t have any other place to go,” said Eric Knapp, 61, who has been living in his car since December.
Knapp said the hardest parts about living in his car are staying warm at night, getting comfortable in the small backseat area of his 2005 Mitsubishi Lancer (he is 5’11”), and finding a bathroom to use, he said.
“I can't afford to move. I live here in town. All my stuff is here in town in a storage unit,” he said. “I will probably be one of the ones going to jail 'cause I have no place to go.”
Shirley, 72, has lived in her car, a 2000 Chevy Malibu, for three and a half years since her boyfriend died and she had to move out of his mobile home. Finding housing remains difficult.
Shirley, who did not want to disclose her last name out of concerns law enforcement could target her, wants the law to distinguish between people living in vehicles out of necessity and those using them for drug activity or other crimes.
“Yes, get rid of out-of-stater troublemakers. You know the ones you can tell they're drug addicts and they're using the RVs for meth labs,” Shirley said. “Separate those from us. Give us little stickers that say, we're okay… we're not the nasty, thieving trouble makers. We're seniors just trying to make it.”
Both Knapp and Shirley park their cars at public parks during the day, but find other places — sometimes on streets in suburban areas — to keep their cars when some parks close the gates at night.
City council members Nancy Henjum and Kimberly Gold voted against the ordinance. Henjum also said there is a need for “safe parking” in the city — a parking lot where people living in their cars can park without facing repercussions — but said it is not the city’s responsibility to carry out that initiative.
Last year, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported that Codi Natelli, an emergency medical technician and Colorado Springs resident, was working to launch a “safe parking” initiative, but the program has not yet been implemented.
From 2020 to 2023, a safe parking program volunteers and local faith groups operated in the Denver Metro area, but closed in 2024 because of lack of funding.
“We needed to simplify the bill to give our police force a tool that is understandable," council member Leinweber said.
Police will have the discretion on how to enforce the new ordinance, including which, if any, penalty they enforce, Donelson said. Under previous law, police were more limited in their enforcement because the illegality of “car camping” was more limitedly defined.
“I mean, they're obviously going to get ticketed. They're not going to have the money to pay the tickets. They won't have the ability to always get to their court date. It's just going to continue the sick cycle,” said Tracey Porter, founder of Food Trucks Against Homelessness in Colorado Springs. “We need to help them out, not harm them.”
The nonprofit organization, founded in 2021, feeds and provides essential items to about 85 people without homes weekly in the Westside CARES parking lot.
A study published in the Policy Studies Journal examining the effect of similar ordinances across 100 U.S. cities from 2001 to 2021 found no statistical evidence that criminalizing behavior because they occur in public — such as sleeping outdoors — leads to a decrease in homelessness. The study drew on data from Continuums of Care, a network of local agencies responsible for distributing federal homelessness funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Co-author Hannah Lebovits found that in some cases, the study saw a temporary drop in visible homelessness after passing such laws — only to experience a later surge that exceeded previous levels.
Katie, 31, has been living in her black 2007 Honda sedan with her 13-year-old for the past three and half months. She also requested to not use her last name because of safety concerns.
“I wish they [City Council members] had more compassion to people that are living in their car,” she said. “They don't understand because they're not living in this, you know, they're not in a predicament.”
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