Proposed Thousand Oaks Law Would Ban Home Businesses : Neighborhoods: The ordinance, to be unveiled this fall, would outlaw any cottage industry in which clients visit residences. It would face public review.

As a young photographer struggling to build a business, Forrest Frields worked out of his living room--more concerned about dust balls bothering his clients than increased traffic disturbing his neighbors.

Looking back, Frields says he believes his neighbors must have been peeved. Now that he’s settled in a roomy studio, he pointedly keeps his business traffic away from his residential community.

And from his seat on the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission, he intends to make sure others do the same.

This fall, Frields will unveil a draft ordinance that would outlaw dozens of home-based businesses--from photograph snapping to furniture refinishing to manuscript typing.

He frames his philosophy as a defense of residents’ rights: “People spend an enormous amount of money to buy a house here, and they can reasonably expect to have a peaceful, quiet and safe neighborhood. We want to prohibit specific uses that might be unpleasant to have next door.”

To that end, Frields has proposed banning any personal service that requires clients to visit a home, including fix-it workshops and mini beauty salons. Also out: occupations that generate noise or dangerous wastes, such as dog-grooming, medical research, welding and auto repair.

Before the law takes effect, it will be put to extensive public review, including open hearings before the Planning Commission and City Council. Frields concedes that his laundry list of prohibited occupations may be too sweeping; he’s counting on fellow city leaders to whittle it down.

But though his proposals remain preliminary, entrepreneurs are already hopping mad. Furiously, they accuse the city of trampling on their right to earn a living.

“It absolutely astonishes me, the extremes the council is going to,” said Thousand Oaks resident Robin Westmiller, who operates a computer consulting business out of her home.

Westmiller acknowledges that her work generates some extra traffic, as clients occasionally drop by for advice or attend seminars in her living room. But the idea of penalizing her for those few extra cars chills her.

“It’s horrendous,” she said. “Small businesses are the life-blood of any city. Homeowners don’t understand that.”

Over the past few years, the shaky economy has forced more and more small business owners to pull out of expensive office leases and set up shop at home, plopping their computers on the kitchen table and stashing their file cabinets in the garage.

Nationwide, one-third of the adult labor force performs at least some income-producing work at home, according to LINK Resources, a New York-based consulting firm. More than 12 million Americans generate their primary financial support through work they conduct from the home.

And in Thousand Oaks, in the first six months of 1993, more than 2,000 residents applied for a “home occupation permit” to establish a business in a residential zone. That figure represents a one-third increase over the number applying in 1992, said the city’s senior planner, Pamela Leopold.

While thousands of home-based businesses thrive in Thousand Oaks, the city receives only 20 to 30 complaints a year, mainly from neighbors fed up with noise, odors, traffic or sloppy piles of scrap material, according to code enforcement officer Don LaVoie.

But despite the relatively small number of gripes, the city is poised for a crackdown.

The current ordinance allows business owners to plunk down $15 and receive a home occupation permit, which remains viable indefinitely unless the commercial use becomes “detrimental to the public health or traffic or constitutes a nuisance.”

As envisioned, the new law would flat-out prohibit dozens of occupations in residential zones. Those business owners who did receive a permit would have to heed stricter guidelines on traffic, noise, dust, smells, visual blight and parking. They would also have to renew their home occupation permits every three years.

Frields has asked the city attorney to come up with objective criteria for measuring how much work-related commotion a residential neighborhood can bear. Violators would be warned, given 30 days to correct the problem, and prosecuted if the disturbance continued.

“We don’t live in a free-wheeling society where everyone can do what they want and the devil take the last one,” Frields said. “The bottom line is, you can do all the business you want from your home as long as it doesn’t impact the neighbors.”

But that bottom line may be impossible to tack down. For, as Mayor Judy Lazar conceded, “What’s acceptable to me may not be acceptable to my neighbors.”

Does a typist annoy his neighbors when two customers a day drive up to drop off manuscripts? Does a cabinetmaker bother the block when he works in an open garage? Does a dressmaker disturb the peace when a UPS truck drops off material three times a week?

Who decides? And who enforces? To establish objective standards, city staff might have to do some legwork. For example, traffic engineers could calculate the average number of car trips a street would absorb with solely residential use, then measure the excess noise and pollution stemming from a home-based business, Frields said.

City leaders view such a heavy-handed approach with distaste, but insist it may be necessary.

“I don’t want to get into the kind of vigilance where we’re counting cars on a street or visiting homes, and yet that may be where we have to go,” said Lazar, a member of the Planning Issues Committee that directed Frields to draft the ordinance. “We have to have standards by which we can prosecute complaints.”

The city’s attempt to preserve the sanctity of residential neighborhoods has won cheers from citizens like Robert Luce, who has complained repeatedly about the noise from a day-care center based in the home next door.

In California, state law protects day-care centers from onerous local regulation. But the city can require child-care providers to install sound-blocking fences, or to limit outdoor play hours. The Thousand Oaks City Council is scheduled to consider tighter day-care regulations in October--not soon enough for Luce.

“If they’re creating noise and traffic, that’s a problem,” he said. “But I have no rights. It’s miserable.”

Ironically, Luce earns his living at home as a computer programmer. But because he works alone, and communicates with his Burbank-based boss through a modem, his activities have “no impact on the neighborhood,” he said.

Still, business advocates point to Luce’s situation as proof that a crackdown on home-based work may be impossible to enforce. Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce President Steve Rubenstein said the proposed ordinance raises far too many questions. The possibilities for nit-picking are endless, he said.

For example, what if the computer Luce uses for work breaks down frequently and repair trucks rumble through the neighborhood? What if his supervisor comes to visit him regularly? What if his modem makes shrill beeping sounds audible from a nearby yard?

“We’re opening a whole can of worms here,” Rubenstein said in dismay.

In response, Frields offers a simple credo: Income-generating businesses do not belong in a residential neighborhood. “There are commercial zones just for these purposes,” he said. “Do it there.”