DeSantis vetoes vacation rental bill, causing division in Indian Shores Beach

INDIAN SHORES BEACH, Fla. (WFLA) — The booming business of vacation rentals has become a contentious issue throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Many residents feel their peaceful neighborhoods are being overrun by short-term renters and rowdy guests.

Florida’s legislature passed a bill that gave the state, and not local officials, the power to control short-term rentals. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed the bill.

In one Indian Rocks Beach neighborhood, there are signs welcoming renters. Right next door, signs dis-inviting them. Vacation rental properties are clashing with residents.

“A once peaceful safe neighborhood and turned into an unregulated and unsupervised hotel party district,” said John Pfanstiehl, who lives in the area.

The bill would have shifted vacation rental regulation from local to state control.

Matthew Barrowclough, a First Chair Vacation Rentals property owner, hoped the bill would pass.

“It normalized behaviors that cities could engage in,” Barrowclough said. “It couldn’t have one set of rules for your neighbor and one set of rules for yourself.”

Pfanstiehl said some of the limits help keep his neighborhood safe.

“We have some very reasonable limits on occupancy,” he said. “We have requirements that they post safety information such as about rip currents, about where the local hospitals are, fire department evacuation routes. This law wouldn’t have allowed us to even require that.”

Rental property owners are calling the current local regulations discrimination.

“I, as a property owner right now, have a certain number of people can sleep in a bedroom. That’s been required now by the city of Indians Rocks Beach. Now, if my neighbor wants to have her grandkids over here for Christmas, she’s going to have her grandkids into that one extra bedroom she has, and no one’s going to complain,” Barrowclough said.

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