Yes, you read that right. It’s illegal to camp on your own land in the USA. The land of the free ain’t so free now is it?
Most counties and cities have laws against camping on your own land for more than 2 weeks at a time. If you want to camp longer than 2 weeks on your land you are required to apply for and have a permit, and those permits can be difficult to get if the county doesn’t want you camping there. Regardless if it’s you land or not.
City and county officials make the local laws for that county. Camping is usually prohibited beyond the two week limit. Worse…you can get fined and or arrested if you refuse to stop camping on your own land.
Now…a little clarification is needed here. Some people go buy land without looking into the regulations…they set up camp on their land, and start dumping trash and human waste on the land. They don’t keep the land in good condition and are generally not very sanitary. So, the county will come in and say you must deal with the waste in a proper legal manner. Or sometimes they’ll require you to be hooked up to a water source and create a septic system. Which could be as simple as an outhouse or composting toilet. And perhaps a water tank for potable water. Seems a simple enough fix. But it’s not.
None of these regulations negate the fact that we should all be able to camp on our own private land if we choose to for as long as we want without having to apply for a permit to camp on OUR OWN LAND. Especially if we’re not within city limits or in a developed rural subdivision. It should not matter. But it does.
The government overreach and restrictions are infringing on our rights to private property and they’re using “environmental” and “health and safety” laws and regulations to do it.
Now, to be fair, there’s a damn good reason for environmental regulations. That is to protect the environment, wildlife, clean water and air, and nature in general. It’s a good thing to be protective of our environment. It behooves us to protect the environment given the fact that we live in it. Keep a clean house and all.
BUT NOT AT THE COST OF OUR FREEDOM
We must draw a line between environmental/health-safety protection and human rights to autonomy and freedom. We don’t need or want government infringing on our rights.
There must be a clear distinction between these two very important areas. It must be balanced, not skewed. It must be fair, not overly restrictive. It must be intelligent, not broad and vague law made on a whim without regard for private property rights or human freedoms. It must be open and allow for simple common sense human needs.
The environment and human health and safety is important. It’s vital. And that’s why laws exist to protect those things.
But when those laws infringe on our human rights to autonomy and freedom then we must take a step back and rethink and rewrite those laws so they do not infringe on our inalienable human rights.
We have a right to live free from the confines of overly restrictive laws that limit common sense necessities of life.
We must write laws that create a balance between nature and human beings, not laws which make it illegal to tread on your own land and use it and develop it how you see fit.
When a law infringes on human rights should we break it? We don’t condone breaking the law. But we absolutely should lobby hard to have it rewritten, appealed, amended and/or abolished entirely. The only thing that changes the law is public outreach and pressure.
Governments like people don’t like when things get complicated. So they write overreaching simplistic laws that too often infringe on human rights of freedom and autonomy. The only legal way to change the system is to change the law. And we do that by lobbying those lawmakers to make the changes that are fair and considerate and that do not infringe on our rights as property owners.
We all have a human right to live on our own land as we see fit. If that is camping permanently on our land then so be it. We have that right as human beings to our freedom and autonomy. We’re not harming the environment by simply camping out. We have proper waste disposal systems. We have trash receptacles, we’re not trashing the land…our land. We have water and power and we take care of our families.
We have a right to camp on our own land! Any law that infringes on that right should be rewritten to never infringe on our rights as private property owners and stewards of our own land.