RV and Trailer Parking Rules in Bondurant, Altoona, and Ankeny

Tom Gustafson
September 24th, 2026

For most boats and RVs stored around Bondurant and the northeast Des Moines metro, the street is off limits, and each city gets there by a different rule. Bondurant and Ankeny ban it by vehicle type. Altoona uses a weight test at four tons. Your own property is where the three actually diverge. Bondurant requires anything you park at home to sit on concrete or asphalt, and specifically will not accept grass or gravel. Altoona's paving standard does not reach single-family lots the same way. Ankeny requires every home to have an off-street place to park. On top of all of that sits your subdivision covenant, which is usually stricter than any city rule and which the city will not enforce for you. Here is what each code actually says, checked September 11, 2026.

Key takeaways

All three cities restrict parking a camper, boat, or trailer on the street. Bondurant and Ankeny ban it outright by vehicle type. Altoona uses a weight test instead, at four tons.
Bondurant is the strictest about your own lot: hard surface only, and gravel does not count.
Altoona lets you live in a recreational vehicle on a residential lot, but only 14 consecutive days and 30 days in a calendar year.
Work trailers, construction equipment, and semi-trailers get their own rules, and they are tighter than most contractors expect.
Your covenant usually beats all of it, and the city will not enforce a covenant on your behalf.

Start with the street, because that is where people get caught

Most people who get a ticket over this were not doing anything dramatic. They pulled the camper home Sunday night, left it at the curb because it was late, and meant to move it Monday. Here is what each city says about that.Bondurant. Section 69.14 of the city traffic code says no person shall park a trailer, boat, camper, recreational vehicle, motor home, or equipment of any type at any time on any portion of any street, except for the reasonable time needed to load or unload. There is no overnight grace period written into it. Section 69.09 adds a second net: nothing over eight feet tall, eight feet wide, or twenty-two feet long parks on a city street at all unless it is actively loading or unloading. Twenty-two feet is not much, and a mid-size travel trailer clears it without trying. That means it does not belong on a Bondurant street overnight, and it does not matter what is inside it.Ankeny. Section 69.12 of the Ankeny code reads almost identically to Bondurant's: no trailer, boat, camper, recreational vehicle, motor home, or equipment of any type on any portion of any street, except reasonable loading time. Worth knowing before you rely on it, though: Ankeny passed an ordinance amending Chapter 69 on August 17, 2026, and as of this writing that change had not yet been folded into the published code. The city lists pending ordinances on its city code page. Read that before you assume the codified version is current.Altoona. This is where it genuinely differs. Altoona's Chapter 69 has no blanket prohibition on campers, boats, and trailers by type. What it has is Section 69.09, which prohibits trucks or trailers, or any combination of them, weighing four tons or more from parking on city streets and alleys except to load and unload. Four tons is eight thousand pounds. A loaded fifth wheel is over it. A jon boat on a light trailer is not. So in Altoona the question is what your rig weighs, not what it is called, and you should know that number anyway.

What about your own driveway or side yard?

Bondurant has the clearest rule in the metro, and it catches people. Section 69.12 says parking a car, truck, camper, motor home, travel trailer, or boat and boat trailer on grass is prohibited, and that all such vehicles must be parked on a concrete or asphalt surface. Then it says, in plain words, that gravel is not permitted.That last clause is the one that surprises people, and it surprises them every year. Plenty of folks solve the camper problem by laying rock alongside the house. In Bondurant that does not satisfy the ordinance. If you are going to park it at home, you are pouring concrete or laying asphalt, and at that point the cost of the pad is worth comparing against a few seasons of storage before you start. I am not going to tell you to rent when you should not. But a concrete pad for a 34-foot travel trailer is not a small number, and it is a number that never comes back.Altoona is looser on this, at least in the zoning code. Section 167.10 sets the paving standard, requiring off-street parking areas to be surfaced with asphaltic or Portland cement binder pavement. Read the opening of that section carefully, though: it applies to parking in conjunction with multi-family residential, commercial, industrial, public, or semi-public uses. It is not written at the single-family driveway the way Bondurant's rule is. That does not mean anything goes, and nuisance and property maintenance provisions still apply, but the blanket hard-surface requirement a Bondurant homeowner faces is not sitting in the same place in Altoona's code.Ankeny approaches it from the other direction. Section 194.01 of the zoning ordinance requires storage and display areas for vehicles and equipment to be permanently surfaced with asphaltic or Portland cement binder pavement, and the city's own guidance is that every residence has to have a driveway or a place to park that is not the street. So the practical answer in Ankeny is that the rig goes on the driveway, and the driveway is paved.

Can you sleep in it while it is parked there?

Different question from parking it, and Altoona answers it directly. Section 165.02 of the Altoona code defines a recreational vehicle as a camping trailer, motor home, travel trailer, or truck camper, then states that dwelling in one is allowed in residential districts for a period not to exceed 14 consecutive days, or 30 days in a calendar year.That is a genuinely useful number if family is coming through for a stretch, or if you are between houses. The 14 consecutive days is the per-stay limit. The 30 days in a calendar year is the annual cap, which means you can have more than one stay in a year as long as the total does not pass 30. It is written down, so nobody has to argue about it. Bondurant and Ankeny do not put the same allowance in the same obvious place, so if that is your plan in either city, call and ask before the relatives arrive.

Work trailers, box trucks, and equipment

Almost everything written about this topic assumes you own a camper. If you run a trade, the rules are tighter, and nobody warns you.Bondurant's Section 69.14 and Ankeny's Section 69.12 both say the same two things beyond the RV language. First, no non-licensed construction equipment parks on a residential street for longer than two hours, except while you are actively using it during normal working hours. Second, no tractor-trailer or semi-trailer stands or parks on a residential street for longer than two hours, and that limit follows the trailer when it is disconnected from the tractor. Dropping a loaded trailer in front of the house Friday night and picking it up Monday is not within either ordinance.Bondurant's twenty-two foot rule in Section 69.09 is the other one to know. A box truck or an enclosed cargo trailer clears twenty-two feet without trying, which means it does not belong on a Bondurant street overnight regardless of what is in it. The answer is the same as the answer for the camper: it has to go somewhere.Add the two-hour limit to a crew that starts at five in the morning and you have a real operational problem, not a paperwork problem. That is a large part of why contractors end up renting a bay, and we went through that math separately in our comparison of a storage bay against leasing shop space.

Your HOA is probably stricter than your city

This is the part that catches people who did their homework on the city code and thought they were finished. They read the chapter, found the section, poured the pad, and the board still sent a letter.Covenants are recorded against the plat when a subdivision is developed, and in most of the newer neighborhoods around here they restrict or flat out prohibit parking a camper, boat, or trailer where it can be seen from the street. They are private agreements. The city does not enforce them and generally will not get involved. Your neighbors enforce them, which in practice means the board sends a letter, and in a newer subdivision that letter tends to arrive faster than any city notice would.So a Bondurant homeowner can pour a perfectly compliant concrete pad, satisfy Section 69.12 completely, and still be in violation of a covenant recorded years before they bought the house. It happens. Your covenants are usually in your abstract or closing documents, and they are recorded with the county. Read yours. Do not rely on what the neighbor two doors down is getting away with, because getting away with it is not the same as being allowed.

The snow ordinance is what actually gets people

Every winter, and it is avoidable if you know about it.Bondurant's Section 69.10 puts the snow ordinance into effect automatically any time there is more than two inches of snowfall, whether or not anyone declares it. Vehicles have to be off city streets within one hour and stay off for twenty-four hours after the snowfall ends. Miss it and you get ticketed. Stay parked twelve hours past the declaration and the vehicle can be towed at your expense. Not a fine. A tow. And a tow bill on a rig you have to lift and pull is not a small number.One hour is not much warning for something you have to hitch up and back onto a concrete pad. The separate forty-eight hour rule in Section 69.05 means a rig left on public property for two straight days is exposed regardless of weather. If the plan for February is that you will move it when you need to, the plan needs a second look, because the snow will just fall and the one hour will start and you will be at work or in bed or out of town.

How to check your own address in about ten minutes

Nothing above substitutes for looking at your own situation, and none of it is legal advice. Three steps get you a real answer:

Read your city's parking chapter. All three are online and linked above. Look for the truck, trailer, and boat section and any rule about surfacing on private property.
Check for pending ordinances. Cities amend these chapters and the published code lags. Ankeny is the live example right now.
Pull your covenants. Abstract, closing packet, or the county recorder. This is the one most people skip and the one most likely to decide the answer. The city code will get you through the front door. The covenant is the one that locks the door behind you.

If you want certainty rather than a reading, call the city. Every one of these offices will tell you what applies to your address, and it takes one phone call.

Where our facility fits

I will say the obvious thing first, and I mean it. If you have a paved driveway, no covenant restricting it, and room to maneuver, park it at home and keep your money. That is the right answer for a fair number of people, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I do not sell a 14x35 to someone who does not need it. Where it stops working is a gravel side yard in Bondurant, a covenant with teeth, a rig over twenty-two feet, or a crew that cannot leave a trailer on the street past two hours. Dynamic Storage Spaces XL is a few minutes from all three cities, off Highway 65 on the east side of Bondurant, with enclosed bays from 14x35 up to 18x50, 24/7 gated access, and an outlet in every unit. If you are not sure whether your rig fits, our size guide is the place to start, and the directions page has turn-by-turn from Altoona, Ankeny, and Pleasant Hill.

Frequently asked questions

Can I park my camper in my driveway in Bondurant? Yes, provided the driveway is concrete or asphalt. Section 69.12 prohibits parking a camper, motor home, travel trailer, or boat on grass and states that gravel is not permitted either. A covenant on your subdivision may still prohibit it, and that is a separate question from the city code.How long can an RV sit on the street in Altoona? Altoona does not use a time limit by vehicle type. Section 69.09 prohibits trucks or trailers weighing four tons or more from parking on streets and alleys except to load and unload. Lighter rigs are not caught by that specific section, but other parking rules still apply, so check the chapter for your situation.Can I leave a work trailer in front of my house overnight? In Bondurant and Ankeny, a disconnected semi-trailer is limited to two hours on a residential street, and non-licensed construction equipment to the same two hours outside of active working hours. Bondurant separately bars anything over twenty-two feet long from city streets. Overnight is outside all of those.Does the city enforce my HOA rules? No. Covenants are private agreements recorded against the plat, and they are enforced by the association and by the other owners in it, not by the city. You can comply with every line of the city code and still get a letter from your board.Do these rules change? Yes, and they did this year. Everything above was read directly from each city's published code on September 11, 2026, and Ankeny had an amendment to its parking chapter approved in August 2026 that was not yet codified. Verify against the current code before you act on any of it.

Sorting it out before winter

If the answer for your address turns out to be no, the practical next step is to figure out what size bay your rig needs and see what is open. Check current availability and pricing, or call us at (515) 827-4545 and ask for a tour. If you are weighing an enclosed bay against an outdoor lot or your own driveway, we laid out all three in our guide to enclosed versus outdoor RV and boat storage.