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Local attitudes vary toward home-based businesses

Stacey Myers

12/21/1998

In recent years the national trend has been for communities to pass
zoning laws that allow citizens to open businesses in their homes,
according to the American Planning Association. Some communities have
even passed laws allowing home-based business owners to hire employees,
a move that has traditionally been avoided since it can generate
unwanted traffic in residential neighborhoods.
Here in Rhode Island, however, there are a few communities that still
have not addressed the issue. Neither East Providence nor East Greenwich
has zoning laws allowing home-based businesses.
Gary A. Butterworth, East Providence’s zoning officer, said there are no
plans to change that city’s laws. In East Greenwich, Town Manager
William Sequino Jr. said elected officials have been batting the idea
around, but there are no immediate plans for the town council to take a
vote.
“Our ordinance is very vague, it doesn’t address a home-based business,”
Butterworth said. Doctors and lawyers can, however, open a home office
in East Providence, but they can’t have a sign, he explained.
He added, however, that it is very likely there are a number of illicit
home-based businesses operating in the city limits. “The only times it
becomes a problem are if there’s a sign, or they receive deliveries two
or three times a week,” Butterworth added.
That seems to be the case in most communities, where neighbors only
complain if there’s too much traffic, noise, or there’s some nuisance.
In North Providence Town Council member Paul Caranci recalled an
incident involving a resident, who did drafting work at home. A neighbor
became upset when he enclosed a second-floor deck for office space. The
room had glass walls and overlooked the neighbor’s pool, Caranci said.
“It turned into a real mess,” he said.
Ultimately the resident had to close his home office.
North Providence passed a detailed home-based business ordinance about
three years ago. The law says only 20 percent of the total area of a
house can be used for business, no signs are allowed, prohibits
deliveries from tractor trailer trucks, and restricts the business to
one employee besides the owner.
It also mandates that home business owners, like their counterparts in
traditional office settings, pay “tangible property taxes” for
equipment, such as desks, computers and telephones. It’s a “minuscule
tax” of about $43 per $1,000 in property, but “it adds up,” Caranci
said.
Leo Perrotta, North Providence’s planning director, estimated about 50
to 60 home-based businesses owners have registered since the law passed.
East Greenwich’s debate has caused some controversy, with some downtown
business owners arguing home-based businesses shouldn’t receive
preferential treatment when it comes to taxes.
Jerry Meyers, the director of the East Greenwich Chamber of Commerce,
estimates there are 200 home-based businesses in town, but most owners
deliberately stay out of the public debate. “We do know there are a
number of them in the closet, so to speak, who don’t emerge because
they’re fearful of losing their home-based business,” Meyers said.
The Chamber initiated the discussion about five or six years ago,
according to Sequino. But in the past year it has backed off a bit from
pushing for a bylaw change, according to Mary Berger, the Chamber’s
incoming president.
Berger said she personally advocates passing an ordinance, because more
people are opting to work at home to care for children or deal with
being downsized.
“Nothing is any different when you drive down the streets past these
houses,” she said. Under town bylaws, she said, a home-based business
could be shut down, “which could then mean that they couldn’t afford to
keep their house.”
On the flip side of the issue is Marion Leone, president of the Hill &
Harbor Merchants Association and co-owner of the Blossom flower shop.
“I feel they (home-business operators) should have to go by the same
rules and regulations we do as a merchant,” Leone said. “They don’t have
the overhead and they can undercut the business downtown.”

Though Leone said she doesn’t necessarily object to lawyers and
accountants hanging out a shingle at home, she said she worries passing
a law allowing home offices would cause “an exodus to the home.”
Struggling professionals might be inspired to close their offices, if it
became legal “and that would leave another place empty in the downtown
area,” she said.
The bylaw, she said, should however distinguish between someone who owns
and operates a business out of their home and “someone who’s taking
something home from work.”
In Foster, a rural town in northern Rhode Island, officials “encourage
cottage industry,” said Building and Zoning Inspector Christopher
Gorham. Foster’s bylaw allows business to take up 600-square-feet in a
home and some employees, he said.
In North Kingstown officials adopted new regulations in 1995, expanding
opportunities for home-based businesses, said Marilyn Cohen, town
planner. Retail sales are prohibited; but a sign of no more than 2-
square-feet and two non-resident employees are acceptable.
“I think when we developed it one of the things we recognized is that
more and more people are working at home; we wanted that to be an
opportunity,” Cohen said. “On the other hand we did institute rules to
protect the residential neighborhoods.”