When Bianca King was laid off during the pandemic, she saw an opportunity to move closer to her family in suburban Austin, Texas and to support herself doing something she loves: watching young children. She has two children of her own and watching a few other neighborhood kids helps her to make ends meet.
She registered her daycare with the state, checked with her county health department about local rules and felt safe to open her business. What she didn’t know was that her city of Lakeway has one of the most restrictive home business codes in the nation. When code enforcement first showed up at her door, she thought they were just helping her fill out the paperwork. But she soon found out the application process was more complex and that she had powerful opposition: golfers.
Bianca’s backyard is near the tee box for the eighth hole of a local country club. There’s nothing really exceptional about the course, which winds its way through the neighborhood and adjoins hundreds of homes.
But one of the course’s patrons is former Mayor Joe Bain. At the meeting of the Zoning and Planning Commission to consider Bianca’s application for a home business permit, Bain strolled up to the podium in opposition. He started his remarks by noting that he knew most of the people on the commission. Bain’s principle complaints against the home daycare were that the toys in Bianca’s backyard were visible from the golf course and that golfers could see and hear children playing.
The Zoning and Planning Commission rejected Bianca’s permit on the basis that home businesses cannot have clients drive to the home and must be “undetectable” to the public. At an appeal hearing a few weeks later, more golfers spoke in opposition to Bianca’s daycare.
One woman creepily noted that she had recorded children crying and cars pulling into the driveway. She noted that: “the children are children, we all know they are going to laugh and talk.” Finally, she expressed her concern that the children could be hit by an “errant golf ball.” (An absurd claim, since a golfer would have to tee off facing away from the course to put a ball into Bianca’s yard.)
At the end of the meeting, the board listened to the golfers’ concerns and denied Bianca’s appeal. Bianca does not want to leave her customers in the lurch but is now risking government-imposed fines of $2,000 a day. She recently launched a lawsuit, represented by the Institute for Justice (IJ), to protect her property rights and right to earn an honest living. Hopefully the city will agree to suspend further fines while a state court considers her case.
Bianca’s troubles show how powerful and burdensome zoning codes allow cities to keep property owners from using their homes for even basic, inconspicuous activities. Lakeway’s home business ordinance makes it practically impossible to operate any home business. A term like “undetectable” are not clearly defined, making it possible for neighbors to object almost any money-making activity.
Bianca is like many home-based business owners. A recently released study from IJ found that one in three home-based business owners started their venture after a pandemic-related job loss. And while women make up about one-third of the total population of small-business owners, 55% of home-based business owners surveyed were female. Also, like Bianca, many home-based business owners report struggling with complex local rules.
Bianca owns her home and the service she provides is important to families in her community and critical to her supporting her own children. It’s sad that her retired, golf-obsessed neighbors felt the urge to shut her down, prioritizing their hobby over someone else’s livelihood. Here’s an idea though: maybe when someone is teeing off on the eighth hole, just give them a mulligan if their backswing is disrupted by the delightful squeal of a child playing nearby. It won’t be the end of the world.
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February 22, 2022 at 08:59PM
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Golfers Convince Town To Shut Down A Single Mother's Home Daycare - Forbes
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