City Governments Are Making It Impossible For People To Run Small, Home-Based Businesses -- Including The Sort With Zero Traffic Or Employees!
If you have big trucks and a lot of customers pulling up all day in a residential neighborhood, that's going to make it more of a loading zone and parking lot than a peaceful living space. So I can understand the notion that businesses with a big footprint are best suited to a business area rather than a suburban block.
However...
C. Jarrett Dieterle and Shoshana Weissmann write at the WSJ about overzealous regulators coming for home-based businesses. They are targeting yoga teachers, accountants -- and even YouTube video creators:
Chandler, Ariz.--a city of some 250,000 southeast of Phoenix--describes itself as "built on entrepreneurial spirit." You could forgive Kim O'Neil for not buying it.Ms. O'Neil and her family are longtime residents of Chandler. Until recently she ran a medical-billing company in the town. For years she worked out of leased office space, but when Ms. O'Neil's father became ill in 2013 she moved the business to her home. After her father died in 2015, she continued to run the business out of her house, because she could fulfill her work obligations while caring for her elderly mother.
In the summer of 2016, Ms. O'Neil received a letter from the city of Chandler informing her that she was illegally operating a home-based business. She needed to apply for a permit within seven days or face action from the city government. Ms. O'Neil assumed the permit would be easy to obtain. Her business was conducted entirely within her home, had no signage or visiting customers, and didn't require the storage of commercial equipment or inventory.
Chandler officials didn't see it that way. They told Ms. O'Neil that her three employees were not allowed to work on-site, though they parked in her driveway and didn't cause traffic concerns. Eventually, in an attempt to appease city officials, Ms. O'Neil instructed her employees to work from their own residences rather than her home.
City officials were still unmoved. They informed Ms. O'Neil that she would have to build a parking facility, submit architectural drawings of her home, and obtain approval from every neighbor within 600 feet. Doing so would have been expensive, but that wasn't all. The city even suggested Ms. O'Neil might have to attend monthly meetings with city officials. Her business bothered no one and was entirely self-contained in her home, but Ms. O'Neil eventually gave up. She shut down her business, calling the episode "one of the most stressful experiences of my life."
Ms. O'Neil isn't alone. In 1992 there were about 16 million home businesses in the U.S., according to census data. By 2012 that number grew to 27 million. Today about half of all American businesses are home-based, according to the Small Business Administration. At the same time, local governments have become more aggressive in cracking down on home-based businesses.
Genius. Make it impossible for entrepreneurs to earn a living. That'll buck up the tax base!
I live a mile from Chandler, lately they've been redoing office spaces around me where they take a 200 sq foot pace chop it up into a 'conference room' a 'lobby' and about 15 broom closets to rent out as office space for home based business.
Pay $200 dollars in rent a month for an "office", a bit more if you want a secretary to answer inbound calls and shuffle them to your voicemail
On the other hand a simple business licence costs less than $50 a year in most Phoenix satellite cities
lujlp at July 16, 2018 2:10 AM
Yoga classes that have several people in them are going to mean several cars taking up parking spots, and in some neighborhoods that is a problem.
I'd say the best businesses suited towards homes are where the customers come one at a time by appointment... IE, private yoga lessons, reiki-type services, therapists, bra fitting, etc.
NicoleK at July 16, 2018 5:18 AM
It's harder for the politicos & bureaucrats to extract graft from the small businesses.
dee nile at July 16, 2018 5:42 AM
What is left unsaid in Ms. O'Neil's story is that a neighbor probably complained about the employees' cars taking up space on the street. Had she gotten to know her neighbors and let them know why she was running the business from her house, this may have been avoidable.
We don't know our neighbors anymore. The neighbor who complained may not have known she was running the business from her house because it allowed her to care for her elderly mother. He or she may have only seen several cars taking up road space every day. Of course, he or she could also have walked over and knocked on the door.
However, complaining to a neighbor is a bit riskier than letting them know beforehand. One risks a rude reception and the onset of a feud by complaining. I had that happen to me once when I asked a neighbor to stop letting her large dog crap in a stand of trees next to and downwind of my house or to pick up after it.
People tend to think of their neighborhoods as their personal space; and they get angry and resentful when someone takes up what is seen as more than their allotted amount of the shared space.
Conan the Grammarian at July 16, 2018 6:11 AM
Wow. If they had rules like that here, just about every contractor in town would be out of business. I'm not just talking about construction either -- there are a whole bunch of 1-4 person small companies here who do Army and NASA work out of someone's home. Many of them are semi-retired people who work 30 hours a week to keep their insurance going.
Cousin Dave at July 16, 2018 6:21 AM
Yep, once you get that letter from the city it is all over. By then it is usually too late to do anything but close up shop or move.
Ben at July 16, 2018 6:24 AM
And note that this woman in the article kept her biz at home after her dad died so she could care e for her elderly mom while working. Can't have any of that!
Amy Alkon at July 16, 2018 6:31 AM
There are 2 ways you can look at the local government:
1) the purpose of the people is to pay for local government
2) the purpose of local government is to serve the people
guess which one cities like Chandler subscribe to?
cc at July 16, 2018 8:52 AM
They have to pay for all the new paint on government buildings somehow
lujlp at July 16, 2018 11:52 AM
"They have to pay for all the new paint on government buildings somehow."
Interesting about how this shows how much our attitude towards our government institutions has changed in the past half century. There was a time when stylish and well-maintained government buildings were a source of civic pride -- people felt a sort of a sense of ownership of them. "My tax money went to pay for that." Nowdays, we all regard government in general as an intrusive "other". Which pretty much describes what it has become between about 1970 and now.
Cousin Dave at July 17, 2018 7:00 AM
One of the risks of establishing a business in a small city or town is that you may be subject to bad policies and regulations - not that big cities don't have their share of the same.
But small municipalities often don't have access to the expertise necessary to craft effective regulations. They're more likely to create overly broad, overly restrictive, overly costly rules. They're also more susceptible to rent seeking from established local interests.
This is an aspect of corporate site planners refer to as site selection risks and one of the reasons that large companies almost never base themselves in small cities.
keith mango at July 17, 2018 7:36 AM
Fair point Cousin Dave, but how many municipalities in the 50s expected stay at home wives to pay architecture thousands of dollars to design a multi level parking structure designed to fit around and above half a dozens single family homes in the middle of a meandering neighborhood, all so it could never be used as all the cars fit in her driveway
A structure which even if designed perfectly would never be approved as it would violate at least a dozen city, county, and state ordinances?
Hell given the small airports that dot Chandler odds are a multi story parking structure in the middle of a suburban neighborhood in would violate federal aviation safety laws as well
lujlp at July 17, 2018 3:38 PM
Fair point Cousin Dave, but how many municipalities in the 50s expected stay at home wives to pay architecture thousands of dollars to design a multi level parking structure designed to fit around and above half a dozens single family homes in the middle of a meandering neighborhood, all so it could never be used as all the cars fit in her driveway
A structure which even if designed perfectly would never be approved as it would violate at least a dozen city, county, and state ordinances?
Hell given the small airports that dot Chandler odds are a multi story parking structure in the middle of a suburban neighborhood in would violate federal aviation safety laws as well
lujlp at July 17, 2018 3:38 PM
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