The proposed “modernization” would lift restrictions that prevent home businesses from having customers and non-resident employees on their premises.
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The City of Vancouver is exploring ways to relax restrictions on home-based businesses, including allowing a limited number of employees and customers onto their premises.
City council will consider a recommendation Tuesday for staff to begin drafting changes to the applicable bylaws and prepare an application for the amendments to go to a public hearing.
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The need to modernize Vancouver’s regulations on home-based businesses was identified in the city’s employment lands and economy review, which was part of the overall Vancouver plan adopted in 2020.
Vancouver currently allows home-based businesses, but the rules limit owners to occupations that can be contained in a home-office setting and prohibit customers from visiting the premises.
The city has issued 7,445 business licences to operate from residential addresses, according to a statement from city hall. But those licences includes businesses where most of the work is done off-site, such as street vendors, repair or maintenance operations, and trades contractors.
“The proposed changes to the home-based business regulations will expand what businesses could take place from a residential premises as well as the business licence conditions,” city staff said in an emailed response to Postmedia questions.
Proposed changes were based on responses received during a public engagement period that found existing rules “(restrict) entrepreneurship, constrains business growth and creates uncertainty for many existing home-based businesses.”
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“Staff are proposing changes that appear to be working well in other cities and seem reasonable in Vancouver’s context,” according to the report going before council.
The report, prepared by Josh White, general manager for planning, urban design and sustainability, proposes the following changes:
• Allowing home-based businesses to welcome customers to their premises, but only by appointment and no more than three at a time.
• Permitting home businesses to have up to two non-resident employees working on-site, as long as the business size “remains appropriate for a residential area.”
• Lifting the restriction that only one resident of a home be permitted to operate a home-based business. This is intended to extend opportunities for others in a household, provided the businesses abide by limits on the amount of floor space they occupy in the dwelling.
• Allowing home-based businesses to make on-site sales, which would expand the types of businesses that can be operated from a home. But a maximum three customers would be allowed at a time and by appointment only.
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The staff report also recommends that Mayor Ken Sim ask the Ministry of Health and B.C. Centre for Disease Control to relax their food premise regulations to give more flexibility for food-preparation businesses to make sales from their home businesses.
Provincial regulations allow for home businesses to prepare low-risk foods on premise such as jams, pickled foods and baked goods, but only if sold at temporary venues outside the home such as farmers markets.
The proposed changes, however, will be balanced off by rules designed to make sure home businesses don’t jeopardize the character of residential neighbourhoods.
Home-based businesses won’t be able to take up more than one-third of a residential unit’s floor space, nor will they be able to use other structures on a property, such as a shed or garage, for storage or other purposes.
The city won’t make any changes to its sign bylaw, so home businesses won’t be able to put up signs larger than 0.2 square metres.
If council approves the recommendation, staff aim to hold a public hearing on the new regulations in September with implementation to take effect in October.
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