Montgomery, AL Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

City Code Sec. 2 Scope, which otherwise limits the code to detached one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses of three stories or less. The amendment carves out five specific exceptions permitted to be built and regulated under the residential code despite not being ordinary dwellings, and the fifth is "a day care facility for five or fewer persons of any age receiving care within a single-family dwelling unit," alongside live/work units, owner-occupied lodging houses with five or fewer guestrooms, and small custodial- or medical-care facilities.

1, separately adopts Appendix BD "Home Daycare-R 3" as one of the Residential Code's adopted appendices, alongside Appendix BA (manufactured housing), Appendix BB (tiny houses), Appendix BF (patio covers) and Appendix BO (existing buildings). Because a five-or-fewer home daycare stays inside the Residential Code's scope, the operator still goes through the standard residential building-permit and inspection process administered by the Inspections Department rather than being pushed into commercial (Group E or I-4) building requirements, which is the practical effect of this exception; a facility caring for more than five people at once falls outside the exception and must instead comply with the commercial International Building Code occupancy classification for day care uses.