Whittier, CA Building Safety: Childcare Center Rules (2026)

020, the R-1 zone's permitted-uses list, names "family day care homes for fourteen or fewer children" directly among the principal uses allowed on a single-family lot, alongside the single-family dwelling itself, mobile and modular homes, small residential care facilities, and transitional or supportive housing. 030, a family day care home for fourteen or fewer children needs no conditional use permit and no public hearing to open in an R-1 home, consistent with state law treating small and large family day care homes as a residential use of property.

06's definitions distinguish the terms used elsewhere in the code: a "family day care home" is a state-licensed facility in a residential unit where the resident provides care and supervision for children under eighteen for less than twenty-four hours a day, while a "child day care facility" or "day care center" covers larger, non-residential operations such as nursery schools and preschools, which are addressed separately in the zoning use tables for commercial zones like C-O. 072, showing that once a use moves beyond the small family day care home, the code applies fixed separation distances rather than by-right permission.