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Letter to the editor

Use all city laws to protect quality of life

An appeals court decision in a Clearwater case illustrates why it is so important for local governments to write clear ordinances and then uniformly enforce them. In 2003, the Clearwater City Commission voted to ban rentals of homes for less than a month in single-family neighborhoods. The vote followed weeks of debate, during which owners of Clearwater Beach homes related tales of woe to the city's elected officials.

On one side were those who lived full time in beach neighborhoods and had found themselves in what had become, in essence, a commercial motel district, with single-family homes being purchased by investors and turned into short-term rentals occupied by an ever-changing tide of tourists. The Internet, providing a venue to advertise such accommodations cheaply, had led to a boom in the short-term rental home business and even more strangers, noise, traffic and litter in beach residential neighborhoods.

On the other side were the owners of those short-term rental homes, who said they had purchased the homes with the intention of renting them out to tourists and counted on the rental income to cover their mortgages and taxes. Some also noted that for decades, vacationers who didn't want to stay in motels had rented Clearwater Beach homes for their stays - it was, in fact, a cherished memory related by some vacationers.

The kicker was that the Clearwater code of ordinances had long prohibited overnight accommodations in single-family neighborhoods. However, the prohibition was not clearly referenced and the city had not enforced it regularly.

After commissioners approved the new ban in April 2003, 31 rental property owners sued the city. They claimed they should have been grandfathered in because they purchased their properties prior to 2003 when there was no enforced provision against short-term rentals.

The property owners won at the lower court level. The City Commission decided to appeal (though the city attorney said there was little chance of winning) and, last week, a three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal confirmed the lower court's decision in favor of the landlords. The 31 property owners will be able to continue to rent out their homes for short stays.

The city's ban will apply, however, to those who began using their properties for overnight accommodations after the April 2003 ban was approved.

While the loss of the appeal is a blow to the city and neighborhoods experiencing problems because of short-term rentals, the city still has the power to enforce its laws against excessive noise, littering, illegal street parking, etc., and should do so uniformly, on Clearwater Beach and elsewhere, to maintain the quality of life residents of all city neighborhoods expect.

[Last modified December 19, 2007, 22:04:48]