Is this actually illegal in the US? If so, where is it legal?
It varies by city, but typically the vast majority of land used for housing (upwards of 90% in some of the worst cases) is zoned for single-family detached houses only.
Small live-work places like this, with a single business on the ground floor and a single dwelling unit above, are likely typically in the single-digit percentages, in terms of land area zoned for that use.
(Even the vast majority of non-single-family detached housing wouldn’t usually allow stuff like this, but would be medium to high-density apartment/condo buildings instead. The phenomenon of having a gap in housing density is so prevalent it even has a name: “missing middle”.)
It varies by city, but typically the vast majority of land used for housing (upwards of 90% in some of the worst cases) is zoned for single-family detached houses only.
Small live-work places like this, with a single business on the ground floor and a single dwelling unit above, are likely typically in the single-digit percentages, in terms of land area zoned for that use.
(Even the vast majority of non-single-family detached housing wouldn’t usually allow stuff like this, but would be medium to high-density apartment/condo buildings instead. The phenomenon of having a gap in housing density is so prevalent it even has a name: “missing middle”.)