Jurisdiction and research scope
City of Ocean Shores, Grays Harbor County, Washington only. Ordinary noncommercial motor home or camping trailer on a lawful developed R-1 residential lot with a permitted dwelling, a rectangular interior configuration and one street frontage. Excludes waterfront, floodplain or other overlay, irregular or corner lots, nonconforming rights, hearing-examiner exceptions, undeveloped and semideveloped lots, R-6A, parks, rental use, tents, emergency, construction and special-event routes. No hookups are approved. Public-road parking remains unresolved.
Research by Can I Park My RV?Official municipal sources; access limits shown belowEditorial standard
Ocean Shores RV parking at a glance
| Location or use | What to check |
|---|---|
| driveway | A driveway does not waive required yards or the ten-foot street-boundary clearance. |
| yard | Ordinary R-1 interior lot: twenty-foot front, five-foot sides and twenty-five-foot rear. |
| street | Unresolved; private-parcel rules give no public-road permission. |
Stored RVs must clear required yards
Section 17.50.200 allows outdoor residential RV storage only on property with a permanent building. The vehicle must be owned by and registered to a resident of that property. It cannot occupy a required yard and must also be at least ten feet from every property boundary adjoining a public or private street. For the narrow ordinary R-1 rectangular interior lot used here, section 17.16.060 requires twenty feet at the front, five feet at the sides and twenty-five feet at the rear. Corner, irregular and waterfront situations require different review. A hearing examiner may grant a required-yard exception only on the specified no-other-location, one-vehicle and no-safety-hazard findings; this checker does not assume or issue that relief. Storage is not permanent or seasonal living, sleeping or housekeeping permission.
Temporary camping on a developed lot needs a permit
Section 15.12.025 permits temporary living use on a developed residential lot only with a camping permit obtained before each placement, all zoning and applicable R-1 and waterfront setbacks met, and a self-contained RV or an approved sanitary connection. A self-contained RV has both gray- and black-water tanks. The operator must own the property or have written permission. The RV cannot be rented or leased to another person. Ordinary use is limited to two RVs at a time, ten consecutive days and thirty cumulative days per calendar year. Use by other people counts against the property owner’s total; moving among the owner’s lots does not restart it. The checker uses self-contained units without hookups and requires actual issued permission, complete counts and compliance with all permit conditions.
Other lot types and exceptions have different limits
Section 15.12.020 has separate ninety-day annual limits for undeveloped lots and one-hundred-twenty-day limits for semideveloped lots, aggregated across the owner’s lots. Semideveloped means power, water and sewer but no permitted dwelling. Parking after 10 p.m. under that section counts as living use even without occupancy. Those are not the developed-lot thirty-day limit. The code also provides discretionary additional-vehicle and permit-extension routes, limited associated tents, a developed-lot owner emergency allowance of thirty days with a permit, and a separate construction permit route of up to six months. This checker excludes those routes instead of treating them as automatic exceptions. Private-site permission supplies no street-parking, utility or wastewater authorization.
Who to contact for your setup
Confirm the exact parcel, permit and counting method with Ocean Shores. Limited administrative screening of the cited local provisions only. Not a permit, legal opinion, safety assurance or complete land-use approval.
Use the Ocean Shores parking checker to organize the starting conditions. The checker cannot approve a parcel, a variance or an unverified exception.
Official sources reviewed November 7, 2026
- Temporary housing, Chapter 15.12
Complete chapter; sections 15.12.010, .020, .025, .030 and .050, including 2025 Ordinance 1139.
- R-1 zoning, Chapter 17.16
Complete chapter; section 17.16.060 ordinary and exceptional yard rules.
- RV storage, section 17.50.200
Complete Chapter 17.50 captured, including ownership, yard and street-boundary restrictions.
- Recreational-vehicle definitions
Complete Chapter 17.04; section 17.04.475 distinguishes the R-6A primary-use route.
- Current code and update cutoff
Code through Ordinance 1156, June 9, 2026.
- Adopted uncodified laws
Full law ledger and Ordinances 1157–1160 captured and reconciled.
- Official 2026 ordinance register
Official municipal ordinance index used in amendment review.
A review date records when we checked these sources. The notes above explain any use of older code editions or limits on access to the full source; an address-specific city determination may still be required. Read our research method.
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