The City of Huber Heights is looking at updating some of its zoning codes regarding home occupations. The current codes were crafted around concerns from the 80s and 90s. Now, officials want to update these rules for the modern day.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, more people have been working from home, but the current zoning laws in Huber Heights may limit your ability to do so. The codes limit how much of your home can be dedicated to your business.
Aaron Sorrell is the planning director for the city but he wants to change that.
“The current home occupation ordinance really only allows you to have a small percentage of your primary home devoted to that occupation,” he said. “We wanted to open up a little bit. So if you had a larger workspace in a detached garage, you could work from that building as well as your primary residence.”
The proposed changes would also allow for an additional employee and signage — both of which were previously prohibited. The employee must not reside in the home and the signage must not be illuminated.
Additionally, the types of professions allowed to operate a home occupation have expanded to include clerical services, music instructors, attorneys, artists, photographers, and more.
Many of these rules are holdovers from previous decades where working from home and home occupations weren’t widely accepted, Sorrell said. They were created to ensure there was “no visible evidence of the conduct of a home occupation.”
Additionally, the current code stresses that “no traffic shall be generated by a home occupation in a greater volume than would normally be expected.”
“In the 80s and 90s, the home occupation regulations were pretty limited because people were worried about delivery vehicles and [customers] clogging residential streets,” Sorrell said. “Well, in the post-Amazon, post-Etsy world, delivery vehicles [going] to homes are fairly ubiquitous.”
Sorrell’s suggested amendments to the code still limit the number of customers allowed to 2 at a time and still stresses the need to limit traffic to what is “normally expected for the residential neighborhood.” But in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Sorrell knew the code would otherwise need to change.
“It was time to modernize that area of our zoning ordinance to provide a little bit more flexibility for those who want to start an occupation, a home based occupation, maybe grow it slightly within their home or accessory building,” he said.
The Huber Heights City Council met for a second reading of the proposed changes on February 13. They will meet on February 27 to vote on the proposed changes.
