New position sought for rental enforcement

By Steve Estes

While there is a move afoot in the Lower Keys to reinstitute a vacation rental program that would allow property owners to rent in increments of as little as seven days, the county is considering cracking down on current illegal vacation rentals.

The county abolished most vacation rentals of less than 28 days following a voter referendum in 1998 that turned thumbs down to such a program. Local residents felt as though the vacation rentals were out of control, producing noise, pollution and generally disrupting neighborhoods.

So they voted to abolish most of them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the vacation rentals shut down, however.

There are estimates that more than 200 illegal vacation rentals still exist in the Keys. One report says there are seven in Port Pine Heights on Big Pine Key alone.

Most gated communities are still allowed to rent by the week. All of the incorporated cities have some form of vacation rental program.

The Monroe Board of County Commissioners will be asked Wednesday to add one position to the county’s code enforcement staff that will be dedicated to ferreting out illegal vacation rentals.

Code Enforcement Director Ronda Norman has requested “immediate funding of a new…position…for the purpose of the enforcement of the Vacation Rental/Short Term Rental ordinance throughout Monroe County.”

She explains in her memo to the BOCC that the dramatic increase in the number of illegal rental complaints and advertisements have made this difficult to enforce with the limited staff available.

She says that enforcement of illegal vacation rentals is a very time consuming process. It requires more than a normal amount of time in research. Enforcement officers, she says, spend hours researching the internet for ads for illegal rentals, licensing for those sites, permitting of the sites, site visits and personal interviews with renters and property managers.

“I believe that with a dedicated resource we can more effectively enforce the provisions of this code and restore a sense of neighborhood back to the property owners being affected by these illegal operations within their communities,” wrote Norman.

Norman says there are currently 29 licensed short term rentals in unincorporated Monroe County.

According to County Commissioner Sylvia Murphy, she has watched code enforcement officers in the Upper Keys spend months on fact-finding to cite an illegal vacation rental, only to have the property owners sell or change the ownership of the parcel, forcing them to start all over again.

The proliferation of illegal short-term rentals has been one of the stumbling blocks local organizers have come across in trying to reinstitute a legal vacation rental program in the Keys.

Neighborhoods have already begun to organize to fight any return of the vacation rental program with county sanction because they are still feeling what they term “detrimental” affects of vacation rentals that are illegal.

Part of the program outlined by the group of businessmen seeking to get the county to take another look at vacation rentals included permits and fees, as well as fines, that would go back to the county to fund up to three dedicated personnel for illegal rental enforcement and administration of a new program.

As part of the agenda summary for Wednesday’s meeting, county staff said the code enforcement department had a specialty officer for illegal vacation rentals, but as staff dwindled, the position began to be used for general code enforcement purposes.

“Later, budget constraints forced the elimination of this position. The restoration of this position will allow a more proactive effort to enforce illegal vacation rentals throughout Monroe County,” states the summary.

Murphy has said that if the business group can convince her that they have some concrete solutions to enforcement the vacation rental program, she might be persuaded to take a look at it.

The addition of that position is projected to cost the county about $54,000 per year. The money has already been budgeted.