Elyria, OH Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

The City of Elyria, Lorain County, Ohio, deals with family day care homes inside its home occupation section, Section 1137.11 of the Planning and Zoning Code. That section opens by allowing home occupations in residential structures as an accessory use compatible with the residential character of the district. Subsection H then sets the main service limit: home occupations shall involve not more than one (1) receiver of such services at any one time. The same sentence makes the exception for daycare: certified or uncertified Type B Family Day Care Homes constitute a residential use and not an accessory use.

Two points follow from the printed words. First, the exception lifts the one-receiver cap for Type B homes, so a family day care operator is not held to one child at a time. Second, the classification as a residential use means the Code treats the home daycare as part of the dwelling use rather than as a business squeezed in under accessory-use conditions. The words certified or uncertified show the Code does not make state certification a condition of that classification. Subsection H lifts only the one-receiver limit by name, and Section 1137.11 does not itself define Type B.

A separate definition sits in Section 1125.16: a child care facility is a place, licensed by the State of Ohio, where care, protection and supervision of children are provided on a regular schedule, for a fee. That definition is a different term from the Type B Family Day Care Home exception in Section 1137.11, and the Elyria Building Department reads the two sections together when it handles a daycare question. Group homes are covered by a different section, 1137.10, with its own registration rules.