Bloomington, IN Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Most home-based businesses in the City of Bloomington need a certificate of zoning compliance, and in Residential districts a Conditional Use approval, before they can operate under Section 20.03.030(g)(6)(B)-(C). A childcare home is different. Subsection (A)i names three uses that are exempted outright from the entire home occupation framework: a childcare home, so long as the childcare home is also the primary residence of its operator; an adult day care home; and a group care home for residents protected under the Federal Fair Housing Act Amendments (FHAA), in either the small or large size category defined in Chapter 20.07 (Definitions).

Because these uses fall outside the home occupation section altogether, they are not capped by the fifty-percent floor-area limit in subsection (G), the one-nonresident-employee limit in subsection (F), or the eight a.m. to eight p.m. customer-visit window in subsection (M) that governs ordinary home businesses; those limits apply only to a Home Occupation as defined by this section, and the exemption in (A)i removes childcare and adult day care homes from that category by name. The exemption does not erase every other layer of law: a childcare home operator still has to meet state licensing requirements administered outside the UDO, and the group care home exemption is conditioned on meeting the FHAA small or large facility definitions and being sited in a zoning district where Table 03-1 allows a facility of that size.

Group care homes also carry their own separation rule elsewhere in Section 20.03.030(b)(10): none may sit within three hundred feet of another group care home.