Lots of businesses get started out of the home and it's important for home-based entrepreneurs to understand the zoning laws and what to do if they would like for some of those laws to be changed. Here are some suggestions from Entrepreneur Magazine. The entire article can be found here.
If it's illegal to operate a homebased business in your city or county, there's something you can do to change things. Following are some steps you can take to change the zoning laws in your area.
1. Establish a committee of home-based business owners willing to stand up and be counted. Get mentally prepared for criticism from every corner and the chance that your business could be shut down.
2. Find out what the zoning regulations are in neighboring communities, particularly those similar in character and size to yours. If operating a home-based business is legal in these areas, it could lend credence to your arguments. If no communities in your area have enacted such an ordinance, contact a city with characteristics similar to yours that has even if it's not nearby.
3. Contact your zoning department to see if it has received complaints about illegally operated home-based businesses. Depending on your findings, you could use the results to prove that home offices are quiet and don't cause problems or to pinpoint a need to legalize home occupations and free up zoning inspectors to handle more important infractions.
4. Do your research. Get local and national statistics on how many entrepreneurs are working from home; describe who they are and what types of businesses they operate. If possible, find out how many people in your community have business licenses, what their average annual sales are, and how much local, state and federal taxes they pay. This will allow you to present data showing home-based business owners as people contributing to the economic foundation of the city. You might also want to highlight anyone who is the only local provider of a particular service.
5. Once you've assembled a research arsenal, use this information to build a coalition that will support a home occupation ordinance. This committee should include home-based business owners, major corporations that use the services of home-based consultants, government officials, homeowner's associations, labor unions, the head of the county zoning department and anyone else with a vested interest.
6. Remember, your goal is to educate first and then mobilize the community to support home-based entrepreneurs.
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