Pawtucket, RI Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Pawtucket's zoning definitions, in § 410-132, split home-based child care into two tiers by size. A "family day-care home" is defined as "any home other than the individual's home in which day care in lieu of parental care or supervision is offered at the same time to six or less individuals who are not relatives of the caregiver, but may not contain more than a total of eight individuals receiving day care," meaning up to six unrelated kids, and up to eight total once the caregiver's own children are counted.

" That distinction matters for parking and permitting. Under the off-street parking table in § 410-76, a family day-care home needs just one parking space per dwelling unit, the same requirement as an ordinary single-family or two-family home, while a day-care center needs one space per 1,000 square feet of gross floor area, a commercial-scale ratio. Family day-care homes also sit outside the special-use-permit list in § 410-60; day-care centers do not. Item AC of that section requires a day-care center to prove state licensing, submit an engineer-stamped circulation plan showing safe pedestrian and vehicle movement, provide outdoor recreation space sized to the facility's fire-code capacity, and get a signage plan, a lighting plan, and a security plan approved by the Chief of Police, all before the Zoning Board of Review issues a special use permit. None of those added conditions attach to a family day-care home operating within the six-child, eight-total ceiling.