Salem, OR Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

070(a) defines 'day care' as day or evening care or supervision of children or adults outside their own home, and lists child day care homes and adult day care homes among the examples, alongside centers, nursery schools, and preschools; it specifically excepts babysitting and care given by a child's own parent, guardian, or relative, which counts as accessory to household living and needs no zoning approval at all. 280 that provides child care in a dwelling unit to not more than 16 children; an 'adult day care home' serves five or fewer adults in the provider's home.

005 lists child and adult day care homes as a permitted (P) use, while child and adult day care centers are conditional (C) and all other day care is not allowed (N). 005 uses the identical P/C/N breakdown, so a licensed in-home operation doesn't need a conditional use hearing the way a stand-alone day care center does. Because the home-based use still has to stay within a dwelling unit and the 16-child state cap, exceeding that number, or running the operation from a separate accessory structure functioning as a stand-alone center, would push the use out of the 'home' classification and into the conditional-use 'center' category instead.