Troy, MI Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Section 2.02 defines a FAMILY DAY CARE HOME as a private home where one but fewer than seven minor children receive care and supervision for less than 24 hours a day, unattended by a parent or guardian, other than the operator's own relatives. The definition sweeps in any home that cares for an unrelated child for more than four weeks in a calendar year. Critically, the ordinance ties the zoning permission to ownership: the person running the family day care business must also own and live in the private home being used, so a tenant or a business leasing a house purely to run day care from it does not qualify for the residential-use exemption.

Section 6.09.A then sets the zoning consequence directly: a state-licensed family day care home is deemed a residential use of property and is a permitted use in every one of Troy's residential districts. The flip side is absolute: the ordinance prohibits family day care homes in all other districts, meaning an office, retail or industrial-zoned property cannot host one no matter how small the group of children. Because the use is licensed at the state level but zoned at the city level, an operator needs both the state license and compliance with the owner-occupancy and residential-district rule to run legally in Troy.