Legal At Last

All the opposition had almost halted the movement's momentum, Bialik remembers, when several events helped to reignite the fire in proponents of legalization.

Around 1992, says Bialik, Baby Bell company Ameritech "put an ad in the paper saying they were targeting the home office market. I called them and asked how the city felt abut them targeting an illegal business."

That didn't get her anywhere, so she went to the zoning commission to see how it felt about Ameritech's actions as well as those of Sears, which had just begun offering employees the option of telecommuting.

The flames were fanned even further during the 1993 Illinois Women's Economic Summit. Legalizaing homebased businesses was put on the summit's agenda, and during what turned into an almost daylong meeting on the issue, Kern says attendees got truly fired up.

"Cindy Richards, who was on the editorial board of the Chicago Sun Times, was there, and when she didn't leave the room to go to any other meeting, I knew something was going to happen," recalls Kern.

At that meeting, 70 women's organizations representing thousands of members agreed to actively work on legalization. And for the next year, Kern, Bialik, Ratner and other volunteers held meetings with, sent faxes and letters to, and made phone calls to city officials in the zoning, fire, building and safety departments to keep them abreast of developments.

The activists' diligence paid off, and in September 1994, the first meeting of the Home Occupations Task Force, created by Mayor Richard Daley, was held. By May 1995, an ordinance had been unanimously approved by the city aldermen. It included a provision to monitor implementation of the law and review it in a year and was also written to address many of the objections raised by opponents of legalization.

Among the restrictions in the law created to maintain the residential character of neighborhoods were limiting delivery times, controlling the number of customers and patrons in the home at any one time, and allowing the use of only 300 square feet of the house, says Ben Gibson, chief assistant of the city's corporation council.

To satisfy union concerns about a resurgence of sweatshops, says Bialik, a section was included that specifically mentioned an existing law preventing such activity.

This article was originally published in the January 1996 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Legal At Last.