La Habra, CA Building Safety: Childcare Center Rules (2026)

Chapter 18.14 sets La Habra's off-street parking standards for every use erected after the chapter's adoption by Ordinance 1719 in 2010. Section 18.14.020 requires any business or industrial establishment, including a day care center, to provide and maintain enough off-street parking for its occupants, customers, clientele and employees, at not less than the rate the chapter sets. Table 18.14.060.B.2, the institutional parking table, lists a day care center's requirement as 0.20 parking spaces per person of licensed capacity, the same table that sets 0.35 spaces per student for commercial schools and 0.20 spaces per student for elementary and middle schools.

Because the rate runs off licensed capacity rather than square footage, a day care center's parking count rises and falls with the capacity figure on its state child care license, not with the size of the building it occupies. Section 18.14.040 adds general rules that apply to a day care center's lot along with every other use: required parking cannot sit inside a required landscape or front-yard setback, each parking space must be on the same lot as the use or within 500 feet of it under a recorded joint-use agreement, and a partial space calculation must round up to one complete space.

Any parking study a day care center operator submits to seek a reduction or exception must be prepared by a California-licensed civil or traffic engineer and approved by the city engineer. Community and economic development department staff administer the requirement as part of the day care center's building permit and use approval, and unresolved interpretation disputes may be appealed to the planning commission.