Ten years after granting Flagler County and other local governments authority to regulate vacation rentals, Florida lawmakers are poised to sharply constrain that authority by removing occupation limits, capping inspection fees, and further defining vacation rentals less as businesses than as residential properties indistinguishable from single-family homes in residential neighborhood.
The House Commerce Committee today approved a bill on a 10-4 vote pre-empting most vacation-rental authorities to the state while grandfathering in all pre-2011 vacation-rental ordinances, such as Flagler Beach’s. The bill heads to the House floor for a vote and reconciliation with the Senate’s version. It is the closest a pre-emption proposal has come to enactment in the dozen years that the vacation rental industry has pushed them. (See HB1537 here, the bill’s legislative analysis here.)
Starkly, no industry representative appeared before the committee today, just as had been the case at some previous committee stops. Those who spoke from the floor did so in opposition to the bill–government association representatives, local elected officials, neighborhood residents. Clearly, the vacation-rental industry is confident that the lawmakers it has lobbied and to whom it has contributed campaign funds will carry its waters.
The main difference between the House and Senate versions is fees: the House version caps inspection fees at $150, an amount that would make it difficult for Flagler County to carry out inspections without general fund supplements. The initial registration and inspection fee is currently $400 in Flagler. Annual renewal is $200 per rental.
“A similar form of this bill in the past has made its rounds over the last 12 years,” bill sponsor Philip Griffits Jr., the Panama City Republican, said. “While this bill is not totally perfect, it defines the roles of local, state and private industry while respecting the property rights of the free people in the state of Florida.”
The House and Senate bills both allow for occupancy regulation. “Occupancy is the driving force between the problems that we have with the vacation rentals–noise, trash and parking: that derives from occupancy,” Griffits said. “If you can control the occupancy, you can control most of those folks.” He said “bad actors” are few. “The tools that are in the locals’ pockets, parking, noise, trash and occupancy are all still there. Now they’ll have the ability to check into a statewide registry as a general public to find out if your neighbor is doing everything aboveboard.”
But there’s a poison-pilled caveat. Occupancy limits are allowed to be spelled out in local ordinances, but any local regulations must be “uniformly applied without regard to whether the residential property is used as a vacation rental,” the bill states. In other words, says Flagler County Attorney Al Hadeed, who wrote Flagler County’s vacation rental ordinance after the 2014 restoration, “if you do not promulgate an occupancy limit over all of the residential structures within your jurisdiction, then you may not enforce it against a vacation rental.” Discriminatory enforcement of the kind would invite a lawsuit that the county would lose.
Travis Moore of the Ocean Hammock Property Owners’ Association addressed the committee in opposition to the bill largely on occupancy grounds. Occupancy is limited to a maximum of 10 guests in Flagler County’s vacation rentals, with some properties free of that restriction because they were grandfathered in at the time the local ordinance went in effect.
“I don’t think anything subverts local government’s ability to exercise its police powers or health and welfare,” Patt Maney, the Okaloosa Republican and vice chair of the committee, said. “It frankly is a little frustrating for local government to beat us up over preemption when they don’t do their job and exercise their police powers. They have the police powers to control noise, to control trash and garbage, to control parking, and if they won’t do it, they shouldn’t complain when the state decides to get an eight or 900-mile long screwdriver to tighten the screws. Having said that, there are lots of things I don’t like about this bill.” Though he voted for the bill today, he said he may not do so in a floor vote.
Dan Daley, the Broward County Democrat and a member of the committee, was opposed. He recalled the original preemption bill passing when he was on the Coral Springs City Commission, “and how quickly the legislature came back and undid that because of the significant blowback at home. It was actually pretty masterful,” he said, an unspoken reference to the fight Flagler County’s legislative delegation, led by Sen. John Thrasher and Rep. Travis Hutson, that helped undo the pre-emption bill. (Hutson has since become a strong supporter of pre-emption.)
“Ever since that that point,” Daley continued, “we have been trying to chip away at that. We’ve been trying to go back to that full on preemption. And it really is bothersome. It is. We talk so much about property rights, property rights, property rights. Awesome. How about my property rights? How about my freedom to not live next to a party house? How about my freedom to be able to go to bed at a decent hour, wake up, have breakfast, make my breakfast or make my kids’ breakfast and take them to school without having to be up all night listening to the house next to me throwing a party four nights a week. I don’t have a wife and kids, either, but–conceptually. My property rights: that’s what we talked about here, and letting the cities weigh and decide how to handle tourism.”
Sam Wagner, who represents the Florida League of Cities, said the bill is both superfluous–creating a registration program already in place locally–and ineffective: what enforcement mechanism the bill creates to take a non-complying vacation rental operator to task makes it virtually impossible to enact because of arcane timelines (Hadeed called them “Byzantine”) that all but make enforcement impossible.
House Speaker Paul Renner, the Palm Coast Republican, will now decide which bill to put on the floor for a vote–the House version or the Senate version. If the Senate version is approved without amendments, that’s the bill that then goes to the governor’s desk. If the House opts to vote on its own bill or the Senate bill with amendments, then the resulting bill goes to the Senate for reconciliation. “So the process is not over. There’s still the opportunity for changes,” Hadeed said.
Those opportunities are dimming.
Pogo says
@All the noise from the victims (homeowners opposed to this)
…smothered by the fat ass of the people that so many of them elected, starting with Jeb, and since.
Welcome to the world you’ve made.
Jane Gentile-Youd says
Hadeed is the attorney in the state to stop this. That is his one and only action as our attorney I have lauded and thank ed him. Hopefully he redeem the respect I and many others once had.
Shark says
Fat chance of getting Barney Fife’s to respond to a noise or parking complaint. They are too busy running radar on I95
The Sour Kraut says
There was one short term rental house on our block. Thank God it has been sold and the new owner will be living there. I feel for everyone who has to live near these “party houses”.
Angela B says
Patt Maney, the Okaloosa Republican and vice chair of the committee, said “They [local governments] have the police powers to control noise, to control trash and garbage, to control parking, and if they won’t do it, they shouldn’t complain when the state decides to get an eight or 900-mile long screwdriver to tighten the screws.” What a damned crock! It’s the vacation rental industry that’s tightening the screws on residents! Bend over.
Bill sponsor Philip Griffits Jr., the Panama City Republican, said “While this bill is not totally perfect, it defines the roles of local, state and private industry while respecting the property rights of the free people in the state of Florida.” This man let this statement come out of his mouth without any conscience. He doesn’t mention that the owners of these commercial properties mostly live out of state, and many outside of the U.S.. He thinks we are stupid. He doesn’t give a damn what the real Florida residents want.
These Republican politicians are squashing our rights every chance they get. They are handing the State of Florida over to the big, world wide corporations, and disregarding the wishes of their constituents. You and I cannot contribute money to their campaigns like the multi-billion dollar vacation rental companies can. So, we are to be bullshitted about “property rights” while our residential neighborhoods are degraded. Where are our “property rights” to live in the residential neighborhoods we bought in to? Their mission is our privacy lost. Our sanctity lost. Our safety lost. Our right to govern our own neighborhoods lost. Believe me, they will not stop at vacation rentals. Under their *leadership* our state will become unrecognizable.
If you rent commercial, vacation units amongst homes in single family residential neighborhoods, then you are a big part of the problem. You are not wanted there. Do you want these commercial units next door to you? I saw an ad for a “home” in a single family residential neighborhood, here in the Hammock, in Sand and Surf Magazine, boosting its availability for 16 people a night. What part of “single” “family” “residential” “zone” do these politicians not understand? The personal, financial gain for them part?
If you don’t want this action next door to you, say something! Go to https://www.homerulefl.com/ and let these politicians know this is not what the real Florida residents want! And if they continue to not listen to us residents, vote them out!
Angela B says
Pogo: Believe me, I did not vote for any of these “fat ass” politicians, not did I ever donate to any of their campaigns. This is the world that money bigger than mine made.
Pogo says
@AB
Agree 100%, ergo, so many, as opposed to all.
Every time an elected Republican talks about their support for “hardworking families like yours” their ears and nose should light up bright red while a cloud of sulfuric gas issues from their butt. They’ve prospered as they have because it’s true — you can’t cheat an honest person…
Ron says
Representative Chairman Renner and fellow representatives,
I am writing you today regarding the proposed Florida Senate Bill 280 and House Bill 1537. Both these bills will have negative affects on homes used for permanent occupancy in the State of Florida. These bills are lopsided favoring the vacation industry and realtors VS. the residents. Watching the session it is pretty obvious how the legislature has been leaning.
I feel this system is fix. The vacation rental industry along with their lobbyists are getting much more time then the 1 to 3 minutes that our residents will get when they drive up to Tallahassee. Three hour ride for three minutes.
Here are the main sticking points to these bills.
Line 658 thru 661. This subsection does not prohibit a local government from establishing a local law, ordinance or regulation if it is uniformly applied without regard to weather the residential property is used as vacation rental.
This line should be deleted.
All single family homes license as a vacation rental dwellings are lodging establishments. They are used as a business to conducted transient operations on a daily or weekly occupancy just like a single family dwelling licensed as a bed and breakfast.
Our permanent residences are used as homes and are not license as lodging businesses from the State, are not subject to additional fire protection standards as stated in the Florida fire prevention code 69A, do not require owners to pay bed taxes or require owners to obtain commercial insurance.
All these lodging establishments are recognized in the Florida Building Occupancy code with the exception of vacation rentals. But a vacation rental is providing sleeping arrangements for transient occupants and areas to consume food and beverages just like a bed and breakfast establishment. These dwellings should not be classified as a home being used as a permanent occupancy.
If lines 658 thru 661 remain how are local governments going to enforce occupancy requirements and conduct fire and life safety inspections if these ordinances most be applied to all residential residences?
Occupancy is another problem with these bills. Lines 504 thru 509 should be amended or deleted. The reference to more than two persons per bedroom if there is at least 50 square feet per person ,plus additional two person in one common area , which ever is greater will result in an over occupied transient dwelling. In addition to illegal conversion of non habitable spaces like garages that do not provide in most cases secondary means of egress. This is a life safety hazard for the occupants inside the dwelling and our first responders.
Occupancy should only be based on habitual sleeping spaces. Two persons per sleeping accommodation is the standard in any lodging establishment plus two in a common area if provided.
Another problem area is fees. The owners of these vacation rental dwellings should be paying the required fees to operate their businesses. Local governments should be able to charge fees based on their cost to conduct inspections and to pay their staff. This burden should not be placed on residents.
But probably my biggest concern is not grandfathering local governments that have created ordinances to deal with local issues since 2014. The ordinances that where put in place have been vetted in the courts, there have been no Burt Harris claims collected and the vacation rental industry has been thriving in Flagler County.
Now after 9 years your bills we turn back the clock. Back to the days of 26 occupants in a four bedroom home, back to owners converting non habitual areas without secondary means of egress, back to these dwellings operating unregulated with no fire and life safety inspections and back to the days where your own division refuses to conduct inspections.
But the question is why are you not treating one family dwellings license as vacation rental dwellings as lodging establishments? This is not a property rights violation to enforce regulations separately from our homes being used for permanent occupancy. Remember as an owner of a single family dwelling I have a right to license my dwelling as a bed and breakfast lodging establishment. But I must also designate my dwellings as such and follow all the rules that apply. In addition my bed and breakfast is managed by on duty personnel that can monitor occupancy and handle any complaint on the spot. But that is not the case with a vacation rental. Where a vacation rental is not manage at all. But here is the catch all. If I license my one family dwelling as a B & B I am prevented from operating in areas zoned as a single family neighborhood. But the vacation rental industry cries property rights! They do not want to be held to the same lodging standards. As a home owner and taxpayer I should ask the legislature what about my property rights. What about the right to peacefully enjoyment of my property.
With that being said I am asking my legislators to not support these bills as written.