Short-Term Rental Issue Expected To Pack Indian Rocks Beach Meeting

INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, FL — It's a topic that's pitted year-round residents against rental property owners in the city of Indian Rocks Beach for months, and now both will have another chance to weigh in on the city's short-term vacation rentals ordinance when the city commission hosts a workshop Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 5 p.m.

The meeting will take place at the Indian Rocks Beach City Hall auditorium, 1507 Bay Palm Blvd.

At issue is the city's ordinance regulating short-term vacation rental property.

Under Florida Senate Bill 356, passed in 2014, property owners and managers are allowed to rent out apartments, homes and condominiums to Florida vacationers, and prohibits local governments from superseding that law.

The leniency of the Florida law, compared to other states, makes the Sunshine State one of the preferred markets for investors interested in vacation rental investing.

According to Visit Florida, the state's tourism bureau, a record 35.1 million visitors visited the state between July and September 2022, a 6.9 percent increase from the third quarter in 2021, and a large number of those vacationers opted for private homes away from the hustle and bustle of beach hotel strips.

In a news conference in November, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Visit Florida officials celebrated Florida record tourism growth.

“This increase in tourism will support our entire economy, especially small businesses that have been built from the ground up by hardworking Floridians," DeSantis said.

That's fine, say permanent residents, as long as those visitors are staying in hotels and motels or areas specifically zoned for short-term vacation rentals.

But it becomes a problem as more and more homeowners rent out their homes through increasingly popular home exchange companies like Airbnb and Vrbo or when property investors purchase homes in single-family neighborhoods specifically to use as short-term vacation rentals.

Maintaining that tourists don't necessarily make good neighbors, a stream of frustrated Indian Rocks Beach residents jammed into a special city commission meeting in November to demand that the city tighten regulations on short-term rentals.

While counties and cities can't pass their own laws superseding the state law allowing short-term rentals, the state ordinance is written in such a way that counties and cities have significant leeway in setting their own rules and regulations for short-term vacation rentals.

Residents of Indian Rocks Beach with a population of 4,000 people say their neighborhoods are being taken over by short-term rentals that are destroying the family atmosphere and security of their neighborhoods. They told commissioners that people renting vacation homes have no consideration for permanent residents. They throw noisy parties at all hours, park on their lawns and leave trash in their wake.

With the popularity of Airbnbs and an increase in homes being purchased by property management companies due to the profit potential, Indian Rocks Beach residents said their quiet, single-family neighborhoods are being transformed into transient communities where they contend with late-night noisy parties, visitors parking on their lawns and driving over their sprinkler systems and drunks knocking on their doors at all hours.

It's an issue that John Pfanstiehl, who has lived on Harbor Drive North for 30 years, has been battling for seven years. He said his once-quiet single-family neighborhood has been taken over by short-term rentals. There are 50 short-term rental properties on his street alone, he said.

"That's way too many. How did we get short-term rentals in the first place in residential areas?" he asked commissioners. "I can't believe we have to explain why transient shouldn't be living neighbors."

He and fellow residents are demanding that the city obtain a legal opinion on whether the current city ordinance that grandfathers in existing short-term rentals can be challenged.

"Fight for the peace, sanctity and safety of our neighborhoods," he begged commissioners.

Of particular concern are the number of strangers walking through their neighborhoods. Residents have no way of knowing if these are people renting property in the neighborhood or scoping the area for more nefarious reasons.

"There's a constant stream of strangers coming and going," he said.

Complicating the matter is a series of amendments to Florida's short-term rental laws that makes it confusing for cities and counties to interpret what they can and can't do to regulate the growing industry.

As of June 1, 2011, state law banned local governments from passing ordinances that would prohibit vacation rentals. The job of licensing and enforcing short-term rentals was handed over to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

As such, the DBPR is responsible for investigating complaints about short-term rentals, a duty that has become increasingly cumbersome for the department. As of 2021, the DBPR had 17,267 licensed vacation rental homes, 8,742 licensed vacation rental condominiums and 927 licensed vacation rental apartments along with 2,159 hotels and 2,500 motels that it oversees.

During the 2022 legislative session, Senate Bill 512 loosened its short-term rental regulations once again to allow short-term vacation rentals to be leased out to guests more than three times for periods of less than 30 days or one calendar month, whichever is shorter, and permit local ordinances passed before June 1, 2011, to be amended to be less restrictive but not more restrictive.

The hands of local governments aren't completely tied, however. They can regulate short-term vacation rentals through parking and garbage requirements, enforcing local code violations concerning loud or disruptive parties, penalizing property owners or managers for violating community association restrictions, limiting occupancy and raising inspection and licensing fees.

Property managers say such restrictions could jeopardize their livelihoods.

Alan Agoado, who manages vacation properties in Indian Rocks Beach, fears the local restrictions proposed by residents would not only hurt his business but the hundreds of restaurants, shops and entertainment venues that depend on tourism.

"They are talking about making some huge restrictions that could totally change the tourism of Indian Rocks Beach and put local businesses out of business," he said. "Short-term rentals bring in a huge amount of tax dollars to the city for beach nourishment, pay maintenance people, yard people, cleaners, pool people and tons of other small businesses."

The city commission is looking at a number of ways to revise its current short-term rental ordinance including hiring a special magistrate to help the city expedite code violations, limiting guest occupancy, limiting cars that can be parked on the property based on the number of bedrooms, raising rental property fees and requiring fire department inspections.

"The residents want to make fees so high that investors don’t want to rent here anymore," Agoado said.

Indian Rocks Beach isn't the only Florida city grappling with this problem.

Here's how other cities have handled the problem:

• As of late 2021, the city of Sarasota outlawed short-term rental properties by mandating that no lodging can be rented for less than seven calendar days in any residentially zoned district.
• The city of Orlando only allows short-term rentals in which the host lives on-site and hosts can only rent out half of the bedrooms in the home.
• Bradenton limits occupancy to 12 people regardless of the size of the property and requires all short-term rentals to be registered with the city.
• Flagler County officials set parking requirements per room rented and occupancy limits.
• Clearwater Beach does not allow short-term rentals in residentially zoned districts, meanting that property owners can't rent out their properties for less than 31 days.
• In St. Petersburg, Airbnbs and other short-term rentals are allowed in zoning districts where hotels and motels are permission. In the rest of the city, occupancy of short-term rentals is allowed for less than 30 days only three times a year.
• In Hillsborough County, Kissimmee, Jacksonville, Destin and Fort Walton properties can be rented for seven days or less in only certain city zones.