The Golden Girls Would Violate Zoning Laws
Zoning laws are absurdly restrictive, and sometimes just absurd. A few examples I&#x27;ve seen:<p>- homeowner (me) can&#x27;t install a duplex addition for a home zoned duplex without turning the front yard into a 4-car parking lot. It doesn&#x27;t matter that I have one car and could decide to only rent to people with one car, the driveway would need to fit four cars instead of the current two.<p>- most homes are limited to building one ADU (accessory dwelling unit). Only one ~800-sq foot ADU is allowed regardless of whether you have a 3,000 sq foot house on 4,500 sq foot lot, or a 2,000 sq foot house on a 100,000 sq foot lot.<p>- if you want to have a home-based day care business, zoning sets a max number of kids that can attend. In California, this is 14 kids. It doesn&#x27;t matter if your home is 1,500 square feet or 5,000 square feet, whether you&#x27;re in the middle of downtown SF or in a rural area, or whether you have 2 parking spaces or 20.<p>I think zoning seriously infringes on people&#x27;s property rights. You should be able to do whatever you want to your property if it doesn&#x27;t really hurt anyone. Zoning feels like EULAs to me: you &quot;buy&quot; something, but you don&#x27;t really own it because another party has a lot of say in what you can and cannot do.