The Pandemic Scramble to Legalize Home-Based Businesses
Many entrepreneurs starting companies in kitchens and garages find that city zoning codes can subject home businesses to unworkable standards — or ban them altogether.
Home-based businesses, like this soap company in Pennsylvania, have boomed during the pandemic.
Photographer: Susan L. Angstadt/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images
Since first ripping through the U.S. in March 2020, Covid-19 has called into question an idea at the heart of zoning: the strict separation of home and work.
In the first year of the pandemic, half of all full-time workers — and more than 70% of white-collar professionals — went fully or partially remote in the U.S., and many are saying they may never return to the office. And for all the economic tumult it’s caused, the pandemic has triggered a surge of entrepreneurship — much of it quietly taking place at home. More and more, the American economy is being conducted from kitchen tables and garages.