Commerce City, CO Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Sec. 21-11200's definitions article draws the line for home-based care: a Family Child Care Home is a residence used by its owner or legal occupant to provide care or training to 12 or fewer children under 18 who are unrelated to the provider, and the code expressly calls that operation an accessory use to a principal residential use rather than a standalone commercial use. That classification matters because Table V-1, the Land Use Table referenced in Sec. 21-5200, marks 'Family child care home' with an 'R' (allowed by right) in the R-1, R-2, R-3 and R-4 residential districts, the MHP manufactured home park district, and the C-1 and C-2 commercial districts, meaning no rezoning, variance or conditional use hearing is required to run one there.

That is a materially lighter path than a larger 'Child Care Center' (7 or more unrelated children), which the same table marks 'P' (use-by-permit) in every one of those residential and MHP districts and only reaches by-right status in commercial and I-1 industrial zones. Sec. 21-5224, titled Child Care Facilities, sets the operating conditions that apply across both scales of care: all child care facilities 'shall be licensed and operated in conformance with all applicable federal and state regulations,' and the site must provide 'an off-street vehicular loading area or driveway... for the purpose of loading and unloading children.' A driveway used for family pickups and drop-offs generally satisfies the loading standard for a home-scale operation, but the licensing clause pulls in whatever the state requires for a home-based provider before the use can lawfully operate, even though it is zoned by right.

Because the use is accessory, it must remain secondary to the residence itself: exceeding the 12-child cap converts the operation into a Child Care Center for zoning purposes, triggering the use-by-permit review that family child care homes are designed to avoid.