Mount Vernon, NY Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

A, lets a resident run a 'customary home occupation' or a professional keep an office inside a dwelling unit in districts where such uses are permitted. The use must stay entirely inside the practitioner's own dwelling unit, never in a yard or accessory building, and the practitioner has to actually live there; a business run out of a rented spare unit does not qualify. No exterior sign is allowed for a customary home occupation at all; a professional office gets exactly one sign, and that sign still has to meet Chapter 267, Article XIII's Sign Ordinance.

Floor space is capped at whichever is smaller: 25% of one story of the dwelling or 500 square feet. Only one nonresident partner, associate or employee may work on site, and only after either securing Planning Board site plan approval under Article VII or, for a use already operating in an existing structure, registering it with the Building Department. Traffic is limited too: no more than one patient, client, customer or other visitor may be served at any single time. The definition section separately excludes several activities from ever qualifying as customary home occupations, including group dance or music instruction, tea rooms, barber shops, beauty parlors, real estate offices, insurance offices and tourist homes, so those uses need a different zoning path entirely regardless of size.