Dubuque, IA Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Section 16-7-1-2 names childcare, other than a licensed childcare center, among the specific uses permitted as home based businesses in Dubuque, alongside activities like tutoring, home cooking, consultant services and computer programming. The opening sentence of the section requires that any listed activity, including childcare, be conducted so it stays clearly accessory and incidental to the residential use of the premises, which pulls in every condition of section 16-7-1-1: no exterior change to the dwelling or visibility from the street, no traffic, parking, sewerage or water use above what's normal for the neighborhood, staffing limited to residents or family, a fifty percent cap on the dwelling's floor area, and no signage on site or off premises.

Because childcare involves in-person contact with clients, it falls within the personal-contact exception to the phone/mail/email default in section 16-7-1-1(B), though drop-off and pick-up traffic still can't exceed what's normal for the neighborhood. The section separately caps teaching or tutoring at four persons at one time, a useful benchmark for group size even though it's not phrased as a numeric cap on childcare itself. Once a home daycare operates as a licensed childcare center rather than incidental care, it falls outside this permitted-use listing and outside the home-business framework entirely.