Building a business out of your garage is a quintessentially American origin story. In many places, it’s also against the law.

Do you sell cupcakes, run a home photography studio, or tutor kids in your living room? If so, you might be breaking the law.

In the US, zoning ordinances often treat modest home enterprises as threats to the neighborhood. If you’re just running an online business, local governments generally won’t bother you, but if clients are coming to your home, then they try to limit the visibility and impact of your business. Have these regulations gone too far? Should state governments tell local governments to leave home-based businesses alone, within certain limits?

Major companies have gotten their start in someone’s garage. At this point, it’s almost a mandatory back-story for any Silicon Valley company. Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Google, and Amazon all boast garage-based origins.

And it’s not just fledgling tech startups. In residential neighborhoods across America, home-based businesses are the hidden sinews of resilient local economies, from the mom who takes care of several neighborhood kids while their parents work, to the independent tax accountant hanging out his shingle. From the Russian immigrant baking and selling honey cakes to those in the know, to a group of families that started a micro-school during the pandemic.

The rise of remote work makes home-based businesses more viable, because the potential customer base for small neighborhood retail is growing. More Americans could now benefit from the convenience of doing business close to home. Already, about 50 percent of all small businesses and 69 percent of startups are home-based.

...read more at thedailyeconomy.org