Kendall County, IL Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Kendall County zones unincorporated territory under 55 ILCS 5/5-12001, and its own Code, not any city's ordinance, governs a family day care home operated inside a residence. Section 36-2 defines day care facility broadly: any operation supervising more than three children unrelated to the operator for less than twenty-four hours per day, expressly folding in day care homes as defined and regulated under the Illinois Childcare Act (of 1969), 225 ILCS 10. Because that definition captures home-based providers, a resident who cares for more than three unrelated children in the R-1 One-Family Residence District, the County's principal large-lot residential zone, needs a special use permit under Section 36-330(6) before opening.

The same child day care facilities listing appears as a special use across most of the County's other residential and business districts (R-4, B-1, B-2, B-3, B-6) and as a permitted use in the B-4 district, but R-1 is the district that covers most unincorporated single-family acreage. Getting the special use means filing with the Planning, Building & Zoning Department and going through the public hearing process set out in Article II of Chapter 36, ending in a Zoning Board of Appeals recommendation and County Board vote; unlike the RPD-1 planned-development version of this same use, which the Code conditions on a minimum 45,000-square-foot lot and dedicated outdoor play area, the R-1 listing carries no separate numeric conditions in the ordinance text beyond the general special-use standards. Operating with three or fewer unrelated children falls outside the day care facility definition altogether and needs no zoning approval.