Zoning Laws
How to Work Around Restrictive Zoning Laws
If you haven’t done it already, learn where you stand by reading a copy of your community’s zoning regulations, either at city hall or in your city library. Find out what zone you’re in and read the section that pertains to home occupations.
If you’re already in business and think you may be operating illegally, do not use your home or business phone number to get this information from City Hall because many municipal numbers now have Caller ID. (The city of Tacoma, Washington, reportedly has a zoning bounty hunter who tracks down zoning violators and fines them retroactively, and this may well be happening in other communities as well.)
If you rent, or live in a condominium or town house, be sure to check your lease, apartment regulations, or condominium covenants for any clause that may prohibit a homebased business. A business in one unit of a co-op apartment, for example, can affect the tax-deductibility aspects of others in the building. So even if local zoning ordinances aren’t a problem, this sort of thing could stop you dead in your tracks if your business activity involves the sale of products or people coming and going. On the other hand, if you are selling your products on the Web and no one is coming to your home to pick up products, who is to know you’re running a business at home unless you tell them?
One of my readers shared this helpful perspective: “I live in a condominium association that forbids any work at home, but my writing and Webmaster duties bother no one, so I continue to work and I am not telling anyone what I do. I have a Mail Boxes Etc. account and I use that address for all business, including my business license (even though my state says you shouldn’t do this).”
Regardless of laws to the contrary, I and many others believe we all have a right to do whatever we wish in our own home so long as we do not bother any of our neighbors or do anything to change the nature of our neighborhood. If you are generating income from a website and have no customer traffic into your home, I suggest you continue to do what you feel you must do and don’t discuss your work with neighbors. Most homes have computers these days and what you do on your computer should be nobody’s business but your own.
If you know you are in violation of zoning laws, and choose to operate illegally, you do need to plan on the possibility that you might someday be brought to the attention of local authorities and forced to cease business operations. Although there have been exceptions, people are rarely fined for zoning violations unless they persist in the operation of a business after they’ve been warned to stop.
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