Marion County Staff Propose Dropping Special Permits for Manufactured Homes and Spelling Out Where Kennels Can Go

What is proposed: Marion County Growth Services staff have drafted Land Development Code changes that would (1) allow manufactured homes without a special use permit in every residential zoning district and drop the long list of design conditions that now come with that permit, and (2) list kennels as a special use in six residential districts and sort indoor kennels from outdoor kennels in the commercial districts. This is a staff proposal. Nothing has been adopted. The Land Development Regulation Commission (LDRC) holds a public hearing Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. in the McPherson Governmental Campus Auditorium.

If you raise or board dogs on a home lot in unincorporated Marion County, or you are shopping for a manufactured home, two items on the county's Land Development Regulation Commission agenda are about you. The commission, an advisory board that reviews changes to the county's land development code, was scheduled to meet in workshop on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. in the Growth Services main training room to go over both proposals, according to the county's workshop agenda. The agenda describes the items as staff-presented amendments on which the commission will "review and provide recommendations." The next step is the Nov. 18 public hearing.

For buyers: a manufactured home without a special permit

Today, a manufactured home on a residential lot is automatic in some zoning districts and a gamble in others. The county's agenda packet shows the existing rule: the Board of County Commissioners can approve a manufactured home in the R-2, R-3 and R-E districts only through a special use permit, which means a public process and a list of conditions the applicant has to meet.

Staff's marked-up draft would change that. In the packet's use table, the manufactured-home row shows a permitted-by-right "P" in all eight residential columns: RR-1, R-E, R-1, R-2, R-3, R-4, MH and P-MH. R-E and R-2 are shown with the old "S" struck through and replaced by a "P," and R-1 and R-3, which had no entry, are marked as permitted. The matching text rewrite says manufactured homes are allowed as a matter of right in all zoning classifications that allow single-family detached homes, replacing a list of named districts.

The draft also strikes the entire special use permit section. That section is what has governed the look of a manufactured home where a permit is required, and the packet shows every line crossed out. Under it, a home had to be new (never titled or occupied), have a main body at least 20 feet wide, carry a roof pitch of at least one foot of rise for every four feet of run with a one-foot overhang, match the exterior finish of nearby site-built homes, wear stucco skirting of real or simulated block, brick or stone, sit on a foundation compatible with neighboring houses, have a garage or carport, a paved driveway, concrete front and back steps with handrails, and underground electric service. The commissioners could also add conditions to make the home blend in with its neighbors. None of those conditions would survive in the draft. The words "and Mobile Homes" are also struck from the section, and a requirement that manufactured buildings carry a state Department of Economic Opportunity insignia has a line through it.

What the draft adds is a set of building standards written for the R-1 district. As marked up, they would apply to every single-family detached home in R-1, however it is built: a stem wall, monolithic slab or pier foundation, with any crawl space fully enclosed in stucco, brick or masonry; concrete entry steps; at least 1,000 square feet of conditioned space, not counting garages, carports, porches or screen rooms; a minimum garage or carport size of 10 by 20 feet for one vehicle or 20 by 20 for two when attached, built of the same material as the home; and a main roof pitch of at least 4/12. The packet does not say how many Marion County lots would be affected, and the redline does not make clear which of those R-1 standards are new and which already exist in another part of the code. Anyone planning to buy in a specific neighborhood should read the draft for that district's rules.

For dog breeders and boarders: where kennels fit

The kennel proposal is a smaller set of changes to two zoning tables, one residential and one commercial, and the staff item describes it only as updating "Kennel Permitted and Special Uses" in each. The packet does not include a staff memo explaining the reasoning, so what follows comes from the marked-up tables themselves.

In the residential table, "Kennel" is a highlighted, underlined row with a special use ("S") in six districts: RR-1, R-E, R-1, R-2, R-3 and R-4. The MH and P-MH manufactured-home districts have no entry. A special use is not a right. It means an owner applies for a permit and the county reviews the request, so a home-based breeder or boarder in one of those districts would still need approval before opening a kennel. The packet shows no new acreage minimum, no cap on the number of dogs and no setback requirement for kennels, and the draft table does not list kennels as permitted outright in any residential district.

In the commercial table, the draft splits the use into "Kennel, indoor" and "Kennel, outdoor." For indoor kennels, the B-2 district gets a special use, and the B-4 and B-5 districts, which had a combined "P/S" entry, have the "S" struck so that both read permitted. Outdoor kennels are unchanged in the markup: a special use in B-4 and RC-1 and permitted in B-5. In practical terms, an indoor boarding or day-care operation could open in a B-4 or B-5 commercial district without a special use permit, while an outdoor kennel would still need one in B-4. Owners of existing boarding businesses should check their parcel's zoning before the hearing; our dog boarding guide lists local operators.

Kennels have been a live question in the county before. When VOCAL filed a concept plan this fall for new buildings on its SW 52nd Street campus, county planners noted that the property's 1985 special exception named greyhound kennels explicitly and that kennels for other animals would need a special use permit, as we reported in our VOCAL expansion story. That property is zoned agricultural, and agricultural districts are not part of the tables staff brought to the workshop.

What happens next and how to comment

The packet does not say what the commission recommended at the workshop, and we have not seen minutes. The Nov. 18 hearing is where the public can speak. The county's agenda lists it for 5:30 p.m. at the McPherson Governmental Campus Auditorium, 601 SE 25th Ave., Ocala. The packet does not say when the proposals would go to the Board of County Commissioners for a vote, and the county's online calendar did not list a Board of County Commissioners hearing for these two items when we checked. The calendar does list a Board public hearing on proposed Land Development Code amendments on Nov. 9 at 9 a.m., but its description does not say which amendments, and we could not tell whether it includes the kennel or manufactured-home changes.

Written comments for the Nov. 18 hearing go to Growth Services at Planning@marionfl.org, or by mail to 2710 E. Silver Springs Blvd., Ocala 34470; the phone is 352-438-2600, according to the county's Oct. 28 Sunshine Notice as summarized in our November public meetings calendar. Because the packet is a redline, it is worth reading the actual table rows for your district rather than relying on a summary. For background on the board that ultimately decides county rules, see our Marion County Commission guide, our permits guide, our home buying guide and our local government directory.

Sources: Marion County Land Development Regulation Commission Workshop agenda and agenda packet for Nov. 4, 2026 (files 2026-24920 and 2026-24921): proposed amendments to Land Development Code Tables 4.2-3 and 4.2-5 (kennels) and Sections 4.2.6, 4.2.10 and 4.3.5 and Table 4.2-3 (manufactured buildings and manufactured homes). Descriptions of additions and deletions are our reading of the packet's strikethrough and underline marks.