Nonconforming use

Imagine you have a toy car that you like to play with in the living room, but your mom tells you that you can only play with it outside. You really like playing with your toy car in the living room, so sometimes you sneak it in there and play with it anyway, even though your mom said not to.

Now, imagine that the toy car is actually a house or a store, and the living room is a city or town. Sometimes, people do things with their property or their business that the city or town doesn't like. Maybe they have too many people living in their house, or they sell something that the city doesn't allow in their store.

When this happens, the city can tell the person to stop doing whatever it is that they're doing. But sometimes, the person was doing that thing before the city made a rule against it. In that case, they might be allowed to keep doing it, even though it goes against the new rule. That's called a "nonconforming use."

It's like if your mom changed her mind and said you could play with your toy car in the living room sometimes after all, even though she told you not to before. But if you ever got rid of that toy car, you wouldn't be allowed to bring in a whole bunch of new toys and play with them in the living room, because your mom has a rule against it.