HOLMES BEACH, Fla. — Even on a dreary day, Holmes Beach shines.
And it’s not just the beach with its alluring blue water that makes Holmes Beach special. The community beside it shines too.
However, as Mayor Judy Titsworth knows personally, there was a darker time in the coastal community when short-term rentals like Airbnbs and VRBOs multiplied rapidly.
“The residents started leaving,” she remembered in an interview with ABC Action News. “They just couldn’t handle the noise, and the trash, and the disruption to their lives, and no longer knowing their neighbors.”
So, years ago, Holmes Beach passed an ordinance in response that Titsworth said solved many of the problems presented by short-term vacation rentals by regulating them through a comprehensive set of rules.
“And it’s about the length of stay, it’s about occupancy limits — that played a huge role in being able to keep our residents,” she said.
The city now has five code enforcement officers who enforce the rules. The city even uses a service to search rentals advertisements to flag any potential violations.
According to Titsworth, the rules have brought a balance back to Holmes Beach.
“We love our vacationers. They’re really important to our community, our business owners, but we also need residents and to maintain our residents out here, so it created that balance,” she said.
Now, some of the city’s rules regarding short-term rentals are in jeopardy, along with similar rules in other coastal communities across the state, including Redington Beach and Indian Rocks Beach.
A pair of bills in Tallahassee would restrict how cities can regulate short-term rentals.
Supporters said the law, if passed, would actually help cities regulate short-term rentals without over-regulating them. Additionally, under the language of the bills, local governments could still apply certain restrictions to short-term rentals as long as they are also applied to single-family homes that are not vacation rentals.
“The spirit of this bill is really to give local governments some more tools in their toolbox,” said Sen. Nick DeCeglie, a Pinellas County Republican who sponsored the Senate version of the bill, during a March committee hearing.
“Local governments will tell us they want full control…and that is extremely problematic,” said DiCeglie, who said he lives next to a short-term rental in Indian Rocks Beach. “They’re going to still be able to deal with noise, parking, and trash, which are the three top issues when it comes to vacation rentals.”
Critics like Miles Conway, however, described the bill as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” during a hearing of the House version of the bill Wednesday.
Along with other speakers, Conway, who is an HOA president from Vero Beach, said the bill would strip away a city’s ability to protect its citizens from what short-term rentals can cause.
“Chaos, strife, fist fights in our neighborhoods,” Conway said.
He said ordinances regulating short-term rentals, such as the one passed in his community, have helped to tone down disruptive behavior by some short-term rental guests, which he described as “football parking lot conditions, rock concert noise conditions, basketball game occupancy conditions, mass events which consisted of photo shoots — and in extreme cases, pornographic photo shoots — in our community.”
Ultimately, the House bill got a favorable vote from the committee. However, the vote 13-10 vote was close, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle voiced concern.
“I don’t understand why we take away the rights of cities to regulate these bad actors,” said Rep. Mike Caruso, a Republican who represents part of Palm Beach County.
His concern is echoed in communities like Holmes Beach.
“Counties can’t do what cities do. States can do what cities do. You know, we’re the boots on the ground. We know our streets,” Mayor Titsworth said.
Holmes Beach will continue to monitor the legislation’s progress, as will leaders in Redington Beach and Indian Rocks Beach.
In Indian Rocks Beach, Mayor Kennedy said the legislation is particularly frustrating because the city just spent months tailoring its own short-term rental ordinance. After a vote Tuesday night, the ordinance just needs one more before it’s official.
The state’s legislation, if passed, would preempt components of Indian Rocks Beach’s ordinance.
Kennedy called the bills “detrimental to local government” and said she is prepared to fly to Tallahassee, if her schedule allows, to speak against the bills at a later date.
