Guidelines May Help In-Home Outlaws : Zoning: City to consider plan to let more people legally run businesses from their houses. But some say it’s too restrictive.

The days may be numbered when the ranks of Los Angeles’ outlaws include accountants, writers, tailors and attorneys who work out of their homes.

Culminating nearly 10 years of study and debate, city planners have drafted guidelines to allow businesses to operate out of single-family homes and are scheduled to present them to the Los Angeles Planning Commission for a public hearing Thursday.

Under current city zoning laws, the only people allowed to set up shop in residential areas are doctors, dentists and ministers.

For advocates of home-based businesses, the new guidelines indicate that the city has come to accept the growing work-at-home trend that has been fueled by technological advances such as home computers, an increase in dual-income households and a movement toward downsizing businesses.

For city planners, the new guidelines could mean more revenues for the cash-strapped city because it could begin to collect business license fees from thousands of illegal businesses that would become legitimate under the proposal.

But a cloud of controversy looms.

Some home-occupation supporters already have criticized the guidelines, saying they are too restrictive.

“They are terrible,” said Judy Corbet, a vocal home-based business advocate who convinced zoning officials to give her a temporary exemption to operate a costume shop out of her North Hollywood home.

For example, she said, the proposal lists only 27 occupations that would be permitted in single-family neighborhoods. It does not include such occupations as catering, tutoring, providing music lessons and real estate services. Those would remain illegal.

Corbet’s occupation--costume-making--also is not on the list.

“That’s idiotic,” she said.

Paul Edwards, who has written five books and hosts a local radio program about home-based businesses, called the proposed ordinance “a step in the right direction.” But he agreed with Corbet’s criticism, saying the criteria for legalizing a home-based business should be whether it is a nuisance to neighbors.

For example, he criticized a rule that only 25% of a home’s floor space can be used for work. “Who wants to worry about finding a measuring tape when there is no impact on neighbors?” Edwards asked.

But Cora Smith, the city planner who supervised the drafting of the guidelines, defended the proposal and said it can be fine-tuned as it moves through the city’s approval process.

Planners have struggled for years, she said, to devise guidelines that will legalize many traditional home-based occupations while protecting residential neighborhoods from loud, disruptive businesses.

“It’s been a very difficult one to come up with,” Smith said. “We want to protect the single-family neighborhood.”

As for the list of permitted occupations, she said it can easily be expanded.

Councilwoman Laura Chick, who made a motion to have city planners draft the guidelines, supports the proposal but thinks that it may need to be tougher in some areas and more flexible in others, said Ken Bernstein, Chick’s planning deputy.

There are no estimates on how many home-based businesses operate illegally in the city of Los Angeles. But approximately 2,500 residents each year are turned down by the city’s Building and Safety Department for permits to operate businesses from home, according to city officials.

Last year, Link Resources, a marketing research firm that conducts an annual work-at-home survey, estimated that approximately 4 million full-time and part-time home businesses operate in California. Nationwide, 24.3-million Americans operate home-based businesses, either on a part-time or full-time basis, according to the firm.

Although many cities in Southern California have adopted regulations to permit home-based businesses in residential areas--including Santa Monica, Torrance and Redondo Beach--an effort to draft similar regulations in Los Angeles has floundered since the idea was first broached in 1985.

Public hearings on the issue have bogged down in debate over what types of businesses to allow, what restrictions to impose and how to prevent home-based businesses from turning quiet residential neighborhoods into noisy commercial zones.

The proposed guidelines try to address those concerns by suggesting more than a dozen conditions, including a ban on outdoor signs and outdoor storage of equipment or supplies, and limits on noise, dust, fumes and vibrations. In short, the guidelines say businesses cannot change the character of the neighborhood.

If the law is adopted, city officials will rely on neighbors to police each other and make sure home-based businesses do not violate zoning guidelines.

And if a business is proposed that does not fit into the list of acceptable occupations, Smith said the city can schedule a variance hearing, thus deciding such proposals on a case-by-case basis.

Under the proposal, home-based businesses are not allowed in apartments because apartments may not be able to meet city safety codes or provide access for the disabled, among other potential problems, she said.

City planners, Smith said, decided to “get it into the single-family neighborhood first and see how it works.”

In-Home Jobs

The Los Angeles Planning Department has proposed that the following home-based occupations be allowed, although the city Planning Commission may alter the list at a hearing this week.

* Accountant

* Architect

* Artist’s studio

* Attorney, law clerk

* Broker

* Computer programming

* Consultant

* Data processing

* Designer

* Drafting and graphic designing

* Engineering

* Financial planning

* Handicrafts

* Home office

* Insurance agent

* Landscape design

* Mail order business

* Minister of religion

* Musician, composer (no commercial recording studios)

* Real estate agent

* Research

* Secretarial service

* Tax preparation

* Telecommuting (performing work at home for an outside employer that involves research, writing, drawing, composing or consulting with others, possibly through the use of devices such as a telephone, computer, fax machine and the like)

* Telephone services

* Typing, word processing

* Writer, editor