Legal At Last

The first efforts to legalize homebased business in Chicago began in late 1982 and were primarily spurred by public officials, remembers Coralee Kern, president of the National Association for the Cottage Industry. "We wrote and rewrote the zoning ordinances and sent away to other cities to find out what they were doing, but nobody really paid attention to us," says Kern.

"It also started out as an issue with the Chicago Advisory Council on Women [established by then-Mayor Harold Washington]," explains Hedy Ratner, Executive director of the Women's Business Development Center. "At that time, zoning regulations in Chicago did not allow homebased business, so women [who made up most homebased business owners] were functioning illegally. This meant they could not get business loans, couldn't get certified as woman-owned businesses and couldn't get licenses."

They also couldn't get city contracts, grants or credit card merchant status, and were simply not taken seriously, adds Ida Bialik, owner and publisher of the Women In Business Yellow Pages and another early advocate of legalization.

Despite the commission's efforts, Ratner says, they spent years going back and forth between the city administration and the Chicago aldermen trying to get someone to introduce the legislation. No one would.

"It was a classic land use issue," says Chicago zoning administrator Paul Woznicki. "People's biggest investment is their homes, and they want to maintain the integrity of the residential area."

In addition, Bialik says, unions-most notably the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union-were concerned that legalizing homebased businesses would enable unscrupulous employers to create abusive, "sweatshop" work environments.

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