Granville County, NC Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Section 32-199, "Family child care home," is a two-part zoning standard. Subsection (a) sets the hard numeric ceiling: a child care use located in a person's residential structure cannot have more than eight people under care at any one time. Subsection (b) ties the zoning approval directly to state licensing, requiring the facility to meet all state and county child care regulations and to keep a valid state license, including renewals, on file with the zoning permit at all times. The code is explicit about the consequence of noncompliance: "Lack of a valid state license for such use shall mean termination of such use," so an expired or revoked state license does not just create a paperwork gap, it ends the zoning authorization to operate.

The chapter's definitions section further explains that a family child care home means family homes that receive up to a maximum of eight children for less than 24 hours per day, counting the operator's own natural or adopted children and all other persons under age 12 toward that cap. Larger operations fall outside this residential-use category. A separate "Child Care Centers" use, which the code's district tables list at a ratio of one facility per 60,000 square feet with parking set at one space per seven children plus one per employee, applies once a use serves children outside a residence and exceeds the eight-person residential threshold, and it is reviewed as a distinct nonresidential use rather than under Section 32-199.