Columbia County, GA Home Business: Customer Traffic Restrictions (2026)

Section 90-142 defines a home occupation as a business or profession an occupant of a dwelling runs as a secondary use incidental to the residence, and subsection (b) sets three baseline rules every home occupation must meet regardless of type. First, the person applying for the home occupation must actually reside at that address; an absentee owner can't hold the approval. Second, the business may not generate more than 12 additional vehicle trips to the residence per day, a cap covering customers, clients, deliveries, and any other traffic the business itself draws to the property beyond what the household would otherwise produce. Third, the operation can't create noise, dust, odor, light, or other impacts that unreasonably interfere with a neighboring property's use or enjoyment.

Subsection (c) layers on additional conditions for a home occupation to be allowed outright: the business can't change the residence's exterior character or appearance, must be run only by household family members or in a way that doesn't require employees to travel to the residence, must operate inside the principal dwelling out of sight of neighbors and within 20 percent of the dwelling's floor area (except personal care or daycare uses, which can exceed that 20 percent), can't keep more than one commercial vehicle on site, and can't require outdoor or accessory-structure storage of materials, equipment, or inventory. A business needing to exceed those limits, such as operating from a detached garage or storing more than one commercial vehicle, must instead seek provisional approval from the planning commission, available only on lots of two acres or larger and never in multi-family zoning, following the public hearing procedure in section 90-180.