Gulfport, MS Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Appendix A, Sec. I defines home occupation as an occupation for gain conducted in a dwelling only by family members living there, with no additional employees, incidental to the residential use. The definition folds in operating conditions rather than sending childcare to its own chapter: the business cannot use more than 25% of the building site coverage, cannot generate more parking or traffic demand than a typical residential street, and can display only one sign, up to 2 square feet, mounted flat against the building.

Critically for a home daycare, subsection (c) requires planning commission approval before any visits by clients to the home business, and those visits must be by appointment only and provided on a one-on-one basis; a caregiver watching multiple unrelated children at once does not fit that one-on-one framework and would need explicit planning commission sign-off to operate at all. Before opening, the operator must apply for a Certificate of Zoning Compliance and submit a written description of the proposed home occupation; violating any approval condition subjects that certificate to revocation, after which it is unlawful to keep operating until the violation is resolved.

The code also bars any home occupation activity that conflicts with regulations governing similar uses in other zoning districts, meaning a large-scale childcare operation that would otherwise require a licensed child care center elsewhere in the city cannot simply relocate into a residence to avoid those standards.