San Diego Municipal Code Section 42.0709 (Appendix “A”) presently allows city residents to maintain up to 25 chickens, including roosters, within city limits, but requires that they be kept a minimum distance of 50 feet from any structure used for residential purposes, including the owner’s own home. This is in effect a de facto ban on keeping even small numbers of these animals for most city residents since over 80% of the city’s residential lots are not large enough to accommodate the 50 foot setback from the coop required by the code.  

There are presently exemptions from this setback for health regulated businesses like pet shops as well as for schoolhouses, museums, zoos, physicians’ offices and laboratories, lots zoned for agriculture, and businesses that do not raise, breed or maintain the animals on the premises. (San Diego Municipal Code Section 42.0709(e))  

This proposal is to amend Section 42.0709(e) to allow an additional exemption for maintaining up to five hens (no roosters) in a coop which shall be kept a minimum distance of 20 feet from any residential structures other than the structure belonging to the owner of the hens.

Sponsor

Links