DeSantis Vetoes Bill on Short-Stay Rental Regulations

A bill preempting local governments in Florida from regulating Airbnbs and other vacation rentals has been vetoed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Cities and counties campaigned against the bill—alongside short-stay platform Airbnb and management companies like VTrips, who also opposed the bill, but for completely different reasons.

Municipalities opposed the bill because, according to the restrictions in the legislation, they were losing control. Short-stay rental platforms opposed the measure because they weren’t getting enough control, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

In specifying how local governments can regulate vacation rentals, the bill overrode all of the detailed policies on short-stay rentals the cities and counties had put in place since 2014.

The policies included telling municipalities how to enforce violations involving loud parties, including revoking strict rules that cities have adopted that allow them to suspend vacation rentals at a property for several months.

Instead, the bill stipulates that a single-month suspension would require violations on five separate days during a two-month period.

In his veto message to Secretary of State Cord Byrd, Gov. DeSantis said the bill would have prevented “virtually all local regulation of vacation rentals even though the vacation rental markets are far from uniform across the various regions of the state.”

Opponents of the bill had warned that the legislation would have forced Miami-Dade County “to start from scratch” in terms of regulating vacation rentals, calling the five violations during two months standard “tantamount to really being no control at all.”

Translation: This is South Florida, we know how to shut down loud parties.

VTrips urged property managers and owners to oppose the bill because it allowed local governments to regulate rental licenses. VTrips also said the bill created strict occupancy limits and did not provide consumer protection.

Airbnb campaigned against the bill, arguing that it “would increase the regulatory burden on Hosts at the local and state level, undermine private property rights, and empower local governments to add inspection requirements and revoke [their] state license.”

The Florida Alliance for Vacation Rentals posted a letter that people could sign like a petition urging DeSantis to veto the bill, stating the legislation “places more daily operational burdens” on the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, which it called an “already understaffed state agency.”