Let Common Sense, Flexibility Prevail Businesses Vary A Day Care Is Not Like A Welding Shop.
The increasingly unmet need for accessible, quality child care is a critical societal problem. Yet Spokane County Superior Court Judge Richard Schroeder chose to uphold a 45-year-old neighborhood covenant banning in-home businesses - specifically, Jackie Milroy’s successful day care - thus displacing 12 children. He should have made an exception for this operation.
One neighbor, supported publicly by no others, initiated this travesty. While some neighbors testified on Milroy’s behalf, others didn’t know the center existed. This hardly qualifies Milroy’s day care as a neighborhood blight.
No apparent effort was made to find a compromise solution to this dispute. First-strike litigation as a solution is reprehensible.
The covenant barring home businesses was created when most moms could stay home with their kids. Single parents were a rarity. “Day care” wasn’t an everyday term. Is this truly a business the long-ago developer who wrote the covenants intended to prohibit? In an era when families tended to be large, a quantity of children next door probably wasn’t considered an unbearable irritation.
We’re not talking about a back yard junk dealer, dog kennel or welding shop. This concerns the care of babies and preschoolers - little human beings who deserve to be nurtured in healthy, home-like surroundings. Perhaps some would prefer they be warehoused in a commercial district?
This ruling sets a frightening precedent. It jeopardizes an untold number of home day cares. Antiquated covenants abound. Some, which likewise speak for outdated values, impose racist prohibitions that conflict with civil rights. If each neighborhood’s sole Archie Bunker seized upon an old law and ran with it - voila! - the child care dilemma would become acute.
Tarring all home businesses equally makes outlaws of the countless entrepreneurs who design Web pages, teach music, cater, transcribe and the like within their own homes.
Neighborhood covenants serve an important purpose, especially for people not tolerant of diversity. But let’s forge the rules carefully, with options for revision. People change, neighborhoods change, societal needs and norms change. These days, flexibility for home business enhances property value for many people. Remember, that beloved covenant against parking RVs in your driveway may bite you in 30 years, when your perspective changes.