Fayette County, GA Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Fayette County does not treat a home-based daycare as a separate zoning use; instead, it falls under the county's home occupation conditional use rules in Section 110-169(2)z, which apply across the A-R, EST, C-S and the full run of single-family and multifamily residential districts along with several nonresidential zones. Item 10 of that section, 'Day care, child/adult,' limits the operation to no more than three children or three adults present at any one time, whichever population the home daycare serves. Because a home daycare is a home occupation, it is also subject to the section's stated intent of protecting the health, safety and welfare of surrounding residential properties and keeping the business clearly secondary to the home's residential use, in districts including A-R, EST, R-85 through R-20, DR-15, RMF, MHP and several nonresidential zones under the district list in Section 110-169(2)z.

A resident who wants to care for more than three children or three adults at a time, such as running a licensed group daycare facility, would need to locate the use in a zoning district and under a use category, such as the standalone 'child care facility' conditional use permitted in the C-C, C-H, O-I, A-R and MHP districts, rather than relying on the three-person home occupation cap. Anyone starting an in-home daycare should confirm both the population cap and their conditional use permit status with the Fayette County zoning administrator before enrolling additional children.