Ensure Your Assisted Living Business Meets Local Zoning Rules
Jul 29, 2024
In today's blog post, we'll go over ways to guarantee your assisted living facility is correctly zoned for its location. This is an essential phase in running a successful residential assisted living facility. Navigating local zoning laws can be difficult, but understanding these requirements is important for avoiding costly mistakes and keeping your business running effectively. We'll review the most important components of zoning rules, offer practical advice, and point out typical pitfalls to avoid. Whether you're just starting or seeking to expand your current facilities, this guide will help you stay compliant and set your business up for success.
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Why Zoning Matters
Understanding the laws regarding zoning is important because it impacts whether you can legally operate your assisted living business in a certain location. Proper zoning guarantees that your business follows local standards, avoiding potential legal complications and costly delays.
What is a City Planner?
A city planner is a municipal official in charge of the city's development, which includes residential, commercial, and industrial areas. They contribute to the city's plan by choosing where different types of buildings and businesses can be built. Understanding their role is the first step towards negotiating zoning laws.
Different Types of Residential Zoning
Residential areas are generally divided into zones, such as R1, R2, R3, and so on. Each classification allows for multiple kinds of activity. For example, certain residential zones may permit small enterprises such as daycares, while others may not. You must understand your property's individual zoning.
Steps to Ensure Proper Zoning
The process begins by contacting the city planner. Start by looking for the city planner's contact information, which is normally available on the city's website. If this information is not easily available, call the city's main phone and request to be connected with city planning. Once you get the city planner on the line, give them your property's address and inquire whether it is designated for a residential assisted living facility. Be prepared to describe your business model, as they may be unfamiliar with it.
If your property is not properly zoned, ask about the rezoning process. This process might range from filling out simple documents to more elaborate procedures that include city council meetings and public notices. The depth of this technique varies according to geography. When I first launched my assisted living business in Utah, I consulted with several municipalities in the Salt Lake Valley. Some regions had simple rezoning processes, while others required elaborate procedures that may take up to nine months. This information was important in avoiding costly mistakes.
The Role of the Fire Marshal
The next step after zoning is to have the local fire marshal inspect it. They guarantee that your property satisfies safety requirements, such as ADA compliance and fire safety procedures. This inspection normally consists of a brief walkthrough during which the fire marshal notes any necessary improvements.
To summarize, understanding the importance of zoning in your assisted living business is important. Contact your city planner to examine your property's zoning and prepare for prospective rezoning while comprehending the process. After establishing proper zoning, contact the local fire marshal to ensure safety compliance.
Are you ready to start your assisted living business but unsure about zoning requirements? Visit Assisted Living Investing to access our free underwriting calculator, which will guide you through the initial stages of your business. Additionally, check out our Business Plan Checklist to create a comprehensive plan for your venture.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson and I help new and aspiring Real Estate Investors start their Assisted Living business in today's video we're going to be talking about how to make sure that your Assisted Living business is properly zoned for where you're putting that home welcome to Assisted Living [Music] investing hey friend welcome back to the channel before we get started I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net I have our my free underwriting C later to help
00:00:31
you through the process of starting your own Assisted Living business it's an incredible resource I get grave RVE reviews for everything about that calculator how in-depth and well put together it is and I'm giving it to you for free so make sure you go and grab that at assisted livin.on Assisted Living business meets local zoning requirements so we're going to dive deep into the process because this is one of the most important parts of being able to operate home a residential Assisted Living business in
00:01:03
a home in that residential setting you have to make sure that it is properly zoned I talked to people about this all the time um and the process of figuring out really is not all that complex so we're going to dive deep into that in today's video first I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what a city planner is so the city planner is a position um at at the city and what they do is they look at the city they typically you're going to have like a master planner and then you're going to
00:01:30
have some people underneath them and they are planning out all of the things like Hey we're going to put a Walmart in this section and a Target over here and a lows over here and all of those things they're kind of building that out we're going to build residential homes here we're going to build high density residential homes over here they plan everything out and and try to figure things out for where it goes and a part of that process is they have specific zoning so this is a commercial Zone this
00:01:56
is a residential this is industrial this is mixed use and they're going going to have different areas within the city where you are located and they're going to be kind of giving you guidance on exactly what that looks like um where things are now in a residential setting a lot of homes have that residential classification which makes sense right but there are actually different types of classifications in there so you'll have like an r01 r02 r03 all the way up to R 55 I don't know what number how
00:02:26
high they go but each of those different types of residential zoning would allow for things like hey I have a daycare business in my home can I do this I'm starting an assisted living business in my home can I do this so you have to make sure that these types of things are properly zoned and have the correct classification um to do it now when you're doing this you have to start off by talking to the city planner you want to see if you can find their website they're pretty good at doing this and
00:02:52
giving you an email and a phone number if not then call the city's main number and and talk to the operator and get transferred to City Planning and you're going to have that conversation with them you're going to Tee It Up by saying Hey I want to start this residential Assisted Living business here is the address is it zoned properly for me to be able to run this type of business out of the home you're probably going to get somebody that has no idea what a residential Assisted Living business is
00:03:16
because in their mind they think Hotel Apartment style the big building and they're going to immediately say you can't do that there but you need to dig a little bit deeper you need to go a little bit deeper and have some deeper conversation about that type of of business so you're going to need to dive a little bit deeper into that process and and really get to it if you get to the point where they say nah it's just not zoned for that so the next question is going to be what is that rezoning process like and
00:03:45
really the rezoning process is going to be different for each state and really each unique municipality it could be as simple as hey here's these forms you just got to fill them out and say that you're running a business and then we're going to change you from an R1 to an R2 and it's going to let you run the business it could be as simple as that or it could be as complex as we need to put this on the the city council's agenda we're going to have to put it out for public notice um you're going to
00:04:11
have to come in and propose to the city people could come in and say we don't want that there um and you're going to be dealing with things like it could be that complex I have talked with def several municipalities when I was looking at starting this in Utah I went and talked to like 15 municipalities in the Salt Lake Valley and what I found is some of them super easy to to get rezoned uh very simple process or didn't have to do it at all they were really easy to work with and there were others where it was
00:04:38
like well you got to do this you got to do that you got to do this it's going to take you nine months to get it reson and for me as a person doing this research up front it was extremely helpful so before you get started when you start looking for homes that you want to convert if that's the route that you want to go I would highly suggest that you start this process of figuring out the zoning process for different municipalities and if you're like I don't have a home in that municipality
00:05:03
just get on Google and search for it just and give them an address um it's the easiest way to do it in a neighborhood that you think would be good just do that and then dive deep into those conversations with them to figure out what the zoning process is requirements and what it all looks like it's going to be the best way to get this big broad overview of what it's going to take for you to Zone that home properly so you can start your Assisted Living business big mistake if you don't
00:05:28
do this cuz if you get to the point where you're like oh I found the house I got the offer in buying the home now I'm going to do with the conversion and then all of a sudden you find that it's like a 9month process to get a rezone and it's not even a guarantee now you've got a home that you can't do anything well you can't do assisted living with uh so you're going to have to figure something out you're going to have to figure out a different strategy you want to do this
00:05:50
upfront first thing um absolutely um do this before you do anything else if you're buying an existing home it's a little bit easier cuz you're going to get grandfathered in with some zoning things and things like that so it's a better option to do that if you're buying something new you want to be aware of this and have this conversation early very very early in the process and related to this actually a conversation you're having with that city planner is they're going to say okay well now you
00:06:15
need to go get a an inspection done by the fire marshall and the Fire Marshall what they're going to do is they're going to come in and they're going to tell you yeah you need to do XYZ to make this ADA Compliant here's your occupancy limits they're going to look at like egress and ways to get out of the home and the event of a fire um that are specific to your local rules and regulations but you want to talk to the fire marshal for that specific municipality you don't want to go and
00:06:39
talk to the main Fire Marshall in the county you want to be very specific because each area is going to have different rules they're going to be able to give you that guidance this walkthrough by the fire marshall by the way it's a 15minute walkthr they they know exactly what they're looking for they know the standards and they just go through and they're like y here's your list of 10 things you need to do you got to have fire extinguishers here this sink needs to be raised up and can't
00:07:01
have anything below it so you can have uh a wheelchair in it and the stairs are going to need to have some kind of a stairlift they're going to be able to tell you that stuff instantly you're going to have a working list and that's going to give you an idea of how much it's going to cost for you to get this so these are the two like they go hand inand and when you're talking to a city planner the next question is Fire Marshall like who who are they what do I need to learn from them uh if they don't
00:07:26
give you that guidance already you want to be doing that so to quickly recap all we've been talking about here in this video we've been talking a lot about that zoning process what it looks like and how do talk to that city planner who that city planner is how to talk to them to figure it out and then how to shift that conversation over to the Fire Marshall and have them do the inspection to let you know more of the specifics around this around getting that house ready for you to start your Assisted
00:07:53
Living business does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at residental Assisted Living investing. net we are here to help new and aspiring Real Estate Investors start their Assisted Living business I want to thank you for watching thank you for being here with me uh this is kind of a fun topic to talk about and something that a lot of people miss and You by watching this video are getting something that most of those people are not and you are
00:08:18
going to be so much further ahead I want to thank you and ask you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net get access to that free underwriting calculator you can purchase the business planning guide uh which is going to get help build a solid business plan and and help you build really solid underwriting as well to get the funding you need but the accelerator course goes super deep into everything we talked about today um questions for the Fire Marshall how to find them um same with the city zoning
00:08:44
and planning much more than what I did here for you today and really is going to guide you it is a 12we path to ownership to helping you get to the point where you own and and are operating your own Assisted Living business in 12 weeks which is definitely possible I did it um myself uh in that time frame so you can do it too I believe in you I want to remind you thank you for watching I remind you to subscribe uh like the video and ring the bell as well so you get notified we do two videos a week we're putting out
00:09:12
fresh content uh just for you to help you along your investment journey and remind you as well that it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep going step by step by step as you keep making PR progress I promise you you are going to be successful thanks again for watching and have a great day [Music]
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