SEMINOLE, Fla. — Some nights are nightmares for Hillary Simpson and her family, which includes two toddlers.
“There’s been more than one occasion when my kids have been woken up — startled in the middle of the night,” she said.
According to Simpson, they’re startled by frequent noise coming from a short-term vacation rental just feet from the bedroom window of her Seminole home.
“I don’t live next to neighbors. I don’t have a neighbor next door,” she said. “I live next to a business.”
Simpson is one of many who attended a meeting Tuesday night to tell Pinellas County commissioners horror stories. They said short-term rentals, like Airbnbs and VRBOs, are transforming neighborhoods.
They said many are owned by corporate investors who are buying up single-family homes across the state and offering them as rentals, both short-term and long-term.
Representative Berny Jacques (R-Pinellas County) is familiar with that trend.
“In the Tampa Bay area, it’s almost 30,000 homes who are owned by these corporations,” he said. “Statewide, it’s almost 120,000.”
Aside from disruptions described by homeowners like Simpson, Rep. Jacques said the explosion of rentals owned by big corporations is also making home ownership hard, if not impossible, for many Florida families.
“Certainly, when so many homes are being held by these corporations, it limits the supply, which means the price is going to go up when it comes to getting into home ownership,” he said.
Ahead of the upcoming legislative session, the Pinellas County Republican has filed House Bill 401, legislation that would give cities and counties a new tool.
It would allow local government to rezone single-family neighborhoods to help prevent more homes from being bought by big corporations and converted to rentals.
If adopted by a municipality, the zoning would apply to investors who own more than three properties.
“We are trying to target these large, institutional firms,” Rep. Jacques said. “A lot of them are out of state,” he said.
Jacques believes the move will ultimately reduce home prices and lead to more home ownership.
“If we don’t get a handle on this, in ten years, there’s going to be such a limited supply of available homes for our hardworking ordinary Floridians to get into,” he said.
As for Simpson, she believes the bill could also protect neighborhoods from the noisy nightmare she experiences frequently.
“I think it’s the first legislative bill that truly takes the perspective of the full-time resident in our Florida communities,” she said.
The National Rental Home Council has a different opinion.
“By limiting options for quality, affordably-priced housing, Representative Jacque’s bill does nothing but hurt the very people who need housing the most. Instead of calling for policies designed to keep renters out of communities and neighborhoods, we should be encouraging and incentivizing a broader mix of housing choice that include opportunities for both homeownership and multifamily and single-family rentals,” the council wrote in a statement.
House Bill 401 now has a companion piece of legislation filed in the Florida Senate. Jacques said he is currently working to schedule a committee hearing for the bill.
Over the last two months, the ABC Action News I-Team has sent the names and information of nearly 300 people who were stuck in an "adjudication hold" to the Florida Department of Commerce. But now, some people have followed up to let the I-Team know after sharing their stories, they are finally getting the relief they desperately need.
