Warwick, RI Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Section 200.48 defines a family day care home 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.' Table 1, Use Regulations lists this as Use Code 704.1 and marks it 'Yes' (permitted by right) in the A-40, A-15, A-10, and A-7 residential districts, the Office district, General Business, and the Village district, while it is prohibited in Open Space, Waterfront Business, Light Industrial, General Industrial, Intermodal, and Gateway districts.

Because the use is permitted by right rather than requiring a special use permit, an operator does not need zoning board approval to run the home in an eligible district, but the six-child, eight-person cap in Section 200.48 is a hard ceiling: a home caring for more children at once no longer qualifies as this use and instead falls under the larger-scale 'Day care facility' category, Use Code 704.2, which requires a special use permit or a different approval path in most of the same districts. Operators must still separately secure any required state family child care licensing.