Vacation Rental Advisory Group opens citizen input process
An advisory group organized in the wake of a hotly criticized effort to impose higher registration fees and a civil eviction process on short-rentals in Cape Coral met for the first time Friday.
Organized by Cape Coral City Councilmember Jennifer Nelson-Lastra after a pair of proposed ordinances failed to get Council support, the first meeting of the Vacation Rental Advisory Group addressed a number of issues and concerns.
The panel is comprised of 18 individuals who run a gamut from Council critics, property managers, Realtors, vacation rental owners, code enforcement and law enforcement. Introductions were made, providing members the opportunity to share who they are, as well as their concerns.
“I took this on because I saw how important it was for so many of us in the community. I want to see if we need to make changes and what those changes look like,” Nelson-Lastra said.
The two concerns highlighted by the public when the ordinances were brought to Council last month were the fee increase from a one-time $35 registration levy to $600 per year, as well as the police department and code compliance division being “authorized to remove all occupants from the residential rental property until such time that the residential rental property is registered with the city.”
The city estimated the increased fee, based on 10,000 rental units, would raise $6 million annually with 20%, or $120 per unit, to be earmarked for enforcement and the rest channeled into a new tourist development fund for related infrastructure.
On Friday, various topics, concerns, were called out and jotted down. Areas of interest include cost recovery for compliance, tourist development fund creation, length of stay, accountability for the law, cooperation of the business community, consideration of adding annual rentals to the fee, improved communication between all parties, and the requirement of local property management.
Code Compliance Division Manager Todd Hoagland said the division has software that runs a report every night to reveal rentals that may be violating the rental ordinance for the city. He said one cause of frustration is weekly rentals.
“We cannot prevent someone from leaving after three days. The rule is seven-day rental. If they leave after a four-day weekend and vacate the residence, we cannot compel someone to stay the entire week,” he said.
Hoagland said they recently had a case where they brought the rental home into compliance, resulting in a zero fine. He said when nobody was looking, they changed the days of stay back to three days.
Other code compliance issues are parking on the front lawn, litter, noise and putting trash cans out too early.
“Those types of issues are brought to light,” Hoagland said.
A challenge that City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn shared is the number of code enforcement officers they city has, which are not assigned solely to short-term rentals. He said if they use 9,000 short-term rentals that are spread over 120 square miles, with four square miles on average having 75 short-term rentals per square mile, each officer would manage 300 short-term rentals. This is on top of the other issues code enforcement is addressing.
Ilczyczn said since 2021, when the short-term rental registration was put into place, the city has had 6,522 property owners register their property.
“That is the one-time fee – $228,000 of revenue under the fee that was in place at that time,” he said.
Gloria Tate, a Realtor and former City Council member and a member of the group, said it’s a wake-up call from property managers to better improve their process, communication with residents and ability to do vacation rentals.
“It comes down to how they are going to work as a team,” she said.
A resident, who said their house is sandwiched between two Airbnbs, was among the members of the public speaking.
“I have made my peace with Airbnb. It does change the nature of the community and neighborhoods. It’s an enormous amount of stress,” Frank Perry said. “We don’t know who comes in next to us.”
Another meeting will be held next month to continue the discussion of the group, which is expected to meet during City Council’s annual summer hiatus.