Garage To Growth | Freeing No-Impact Home Businesses

MICHAEL AUSTIN | Lecturer of Economics | Brenneman School of Business | Washburn University

Norman and Leatha Hein initially mowed their neighbor’s lawn as a basic form of community service, recognizing a need and acting to address it. Over more than thirty years, they ran a low-profile rural lawn-care business from their Sedgwick County residence, hiring local residents and helping their neighbors. As their business expanded, they requested minor adjustments from county authorities: to let more workers be on site temporarily, to allow sheltered storage of equipment and to enable employees to perform routine maintenance during rainy weather.

The county zoning board said yes, then neighbors and a nearby commercial operator appealed. Years of litigation followed. In the end, an appellate court concluded the Heins’ expansion created a “self-imposed hardship” and vacated the board’s variances.

In other words, success became the reason the Heins could not get the relief they sought.

If you influence policy or commerce in Topeka, whether you work for the city, the state or live here, this should trouble you. The Heins’ story is a living example of how good, lawful enterprise can run into idiosyncratic local regulation and end up punished for growth.

WHAT IS A “NO-IMPACT” BUSINESS?

The concept of a “No-Impact Home Business” is relatively straightforward. The term describes commercial activity that takes place in a residence and produces no meaningful or external harm, no extra traffic, no on-street parking, no loud noise, no visible commercial modifications to the property and no “impact.”

Imagine a bookkeeper practicing at a kitchen table, a woodworker shipping a few custom pieces a week or lawn care dispatchers who store mowers on private property out of sight of the road.

These enterprises are the economy’s low-friction on-ramps. They let founders test ideas, earn income, hire neighbors and, occasionally, scale into Main Street employers. They are essential to communities like Topeka, where low startup costs and flexible work can meaningfully expand economic opportunities.

However, the policy problem is also straightforward. Many cities and counties enforce vague, discretionary rules that make launching or scaling a home-based business a risky endeavor. Those local rules create uncertainty, and uncertainty is the enemy of entrepreneurship.

LOCAL CODES CAN VARY

If you read municipal codes, you discover two things very quickly: the rules vary wildly, and many provisions are written broadly enough to invite discretionary enforcement.

• PRAIRIE VILLAGE
  Prairie Village, Kansas requires a city license and enforces strict home occupation rules, including tight limits on how much of your home you can use.

• CITY OF SHAWNEE
  The city of Shawnee’s code limits outside employees and bans on-site sales, rules that don’t fit every small enterprise.

• DOUGLAS COUNTY
  Douglas Countylong used a tiered system that forced many entrepreneurs into a registration and fee regime; the county only recently moved to ease registration and fees for small rural operations after a public push.

• GARDEN PLAIN
  Garden Plain, Kansas’code allows 50% of nearby property owners to trigger a review and possible revocation of a conditional permit. These are not hypothetical headaches; they are genuine red tape that stops people from adding a job or hiring for one.

• TOPEKA
  Topeka’s home-occupation permitting rules set common-sense limits: a resident must run a home activity, must not change the dwelling’s exterior or erect exterior signs, may not sell merchandise on the premises and may not create excess traffic. The code also caps home occupations at 25% of a home’s floor area and permits only one non-resident employee. The city charges a modest permit fee and reserves inspection rights. Those terms protect neighborhoods, but their broad phrasing gives enforcement officers a lot of latitude.

• SHAWNEE COUNTY
  Shawnee County’s home-use rules are similar: a home occupation must be accessory to residential use, may have no more than one non-resident employee, may not alter appearance or erect exterior signs and generally may not produce more traffic or utility use than normal residential levels. Permits, renewal fees and annual reporting are part of the regime. That mix of criteria plus discretionary permit authority creates administrative drag and opens doors to uneven enforcement.

WHAT’S THE RISK?
Two entrepreneurs doing equally quiet, compliant work can face different outcomes depending on which inspector visits, who files a complaint or whether a neighboring commercial interest pushes back

SELF-CREATED HARDSHIP

Kansas law requires zoning variance applicants to satisfy several criteria, among them demonstrating an unnecessary hardship not caused by the landowner. Courts have often treated a business owner’s own growth as a self-created situation that does not merit post-hoc variances. That legal doctrine underpinned the result in the Heins’ case: because the business expanded with knowledge of zoning limits, relief was denied. The message to entrepreneurs is stark: grow cautiously, or risk being shut down for having done well.

That outcome is perverse. We shouldn’t write rules that encourage entrepreneurs to stay small. A more innovative approach protects neighborhoods from real harm while giving lawful, low-impact businesses a predictable path to grow.

HOW DO STATES COMPARE?

States have started to draw more precise lines. Florida’s 2021 statute (Section 559.955) preempts local ordinances that would prohibit or unduly burden home-based businesses that meet no-impact criteria, while preserving narrow public-safety exceptions (fire, sanitation, traffic, pollution). The Florida law reduces administrative discretion by offering concrete standards and, critically, an enforceable cause of action for business owners. That makes it an excellent drafting model.

Other states and localities have moved similarly. Texas has adopted protections for no-impact home businesses. Closer to the city hall level, Bismarck and other municipalities have modernized home-occupation rules to allow low-impact enterprises to operate by right without the drag of routine permits. Closer to home, Douglas County moved in 2025 to ease registration and fee requirements for many small rural home operations. Those changes aim to reduce enforcement burdens while protecting neighborhood quality, exactly the balance smart reformers seek.

WHY KANSAS NEEDS THIS LAW

The shift towards home-based and non-employer enterprises is more than just a fleeting trend. According to the Census Bureau’s 2023 non-employer statistics, there is consistent growth in home-based and sole-proprietor businesses, which provide flexibility, extra income and entrepreneurial opportunities. Protecting legitimate and predictable home business operations is a strategic economic move: it reduces startup obstacles, lowers enforcement expenses and helps small businesses operate lawfully by paying taxes and hiring locally. Enacting a No-Impact Home-Based Business law could help prevent future legal conflicts for entrepreneurs like the Heins and offer many kitchen-table entrepreneurs the certainty needed to grow.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS
Kansas’ HB 2343 (the “No-Impact Home-Based Business Fairness Act”) embodies the right idea: to protect low-impact home businesses from needless regulation. Furthermore, its language can be tightened to prevent administrative loopholes and preserve durable predictability.

• Make “no-impact” measurable.
  Spell out concrete thresholds: e.g., up to two non-resident employees (or the municipal occupancy limit, if lower); a cap on daily customer visits; a clear parking standard (“no on-street parking attributable to the business”); and explicit language about visibility from the street. Measurable rules reduce arbitrage and inspector discretion. Florida’s statute provides helpful drafting cues.

• Clarify accessory-structure and signage rules.
  Allow business activity in the primary dwelling by default; allow accessory structures to be used only under narrow criteria (size, setback, visibility). Permit one small, non-illuminated, residential-scale sign. This balances neighbor expectations with realistic needs for small businesses.

• No new, home-targeted taxes or fees.
  State the obvious: home businesses remain subject to existing business taxes, but prohibit municipalities from inventing special levies or registration fees that single out low-impact operations.

• Ban retroactive and targeted enforcement.
  Prohibit municipalities from applying new ordinances retroactively to lawful no-impact operations and forbid inspections or enforcement that are targeted solely at homes with businesses when similar residences receive no such scrutiny.

• Keep narrow safety carve-outs and make courts require proof.
  Preserve municipal authority for fire, sanitation, pollution and traffic concerns, but require local governments to justify restrictions by clear and convincing evidence if challenged in court, and award reasonable attorney fees to prevailing plaintiffs so that meritless enforcement is deterred.

• Account for rural reality.
  Premises outside city limits or lots over one acre should get lighter touch treatment unless clear, documented harm exists. Douglas County’s recent updates show how that balance can work in practice.

  These changes do not remove local control over real nuisances. They translate a common-sense rule — if your business does not harm neighbors, it should not be punished — into enforceable law.

BACK TO KANSAS VALUES

Norman and Leatha Hein did what Kansans have always done: they built something helpful, cared for their neighbors and tried to improve their lot. The law should nudge us to protect people like them. Their story is a warning and an invitation. It warns us what happens when local regulation outpaces common sense. It invites us to do better.

Kansas can follow the example of Florida and Texas, adopting a statute that protects no-impact home businesses while preserving necessary public-safety authority, and we can go further by closing drafting gaps, so the law protects entrepreneurs from the very sort of discretionary, after-the-fact enforcement that shut down the Heins’ growth. All that keeps the path from the garage to the growth uncluttered. Do that, and Topeka and Kansas will be a place where people roll up their sleeves and build businesses at their kitchen table, in their garage or on a quiet rural parcel.