Caddo Parish, LA Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

UDC Section 7.3.O lists thirteen numbered standards that apply to every home-based business in the parish's unincorporated area. A certificate of occupancy is required before operating (item 1), and the business must be run by an individual who permanently resides in the dwelling, with only residents of that dwelling employed in it (item 2). Nothing about the property can look like anything other than a residence from the outside: signs, displays, or exterior activity that reveal the non-residential use are barred, apart from a single identification sign of two square feet or less (item 3). All of the business's activity, including storage, has to stay entirely inside the principal building or a permitted accessory structure (item 4), and no toxic, explosive, flammable, corrosive, or radioactive materials may be stored or used on site (item 5).

Deliveries are limited to passenger vehicles or standard parcel and mail carriers (item 6), and the business cannot generate more vehicular or pedestrian traffic than a residential area would normally see, or create a traffic hazard or nuisance in the right-of-way (item 7). The home cannot be altered in a way that changes its residential character (item 8), and there can be no perceptible noise, odor, smoke, electrical interference, or vibration beyond what an ordinary residence produces (item 11). Vehicle and heavy-machinery repair is barred entirely as a home occupation, and tractor trailers, semi-trucks, and heavy equipment cannot be used or stored as part of one (items 12 and 13). Day care homes are excluded from this section and regulated separately.