My neighborhood is not your hotel
To the editor:
Why do we have residential zoning if a house in a quiet neighborhood can become a commercial lodging business?
People buy homes in Cape Coral to live, raise families, and enjoy some peace. Yet an absentee owner can buy the house next door and rent it to a revolving door of vacationers. Some guests are considerate. Others party until 2 a.m., leave dogs barking, and depart before the neighbors recover a decent night’s sleep.
A hotel generally has management and staff to handle disturbances. A vacation rental may offer nothing more than a distant owner’s phone number. The owner collects the income; the neighbors absorb the disruption.
This isn’t just a problem of bad guests. It’s a question of land use. The building still looks like a home, but it’s being operated as a lodging business.
Florida law recognizes that distinction. Section 509.242(1)(c) classifies vacation rentals as “transient public lodging establishments,” licensed through the same Division of Hotels and Restaurants that licenses hotels. Yet Section 509.032(7)(b) prevents cities from prohibiting vacation rentals or regulating their duration or frequency, except under local rules adopted on or before June 1, 2011. A 2014 attorney general opinion concluded that cities cannot use zoning to exclude otherwise eligible vacation rentals from residential areas.
In plain English, Tallahassee licenses these properties as lodging establishments, then restricts Cape Coral from keeping them out of residential neighborhoods.
Registration and noise citations are no substitute. They address an operation already in place, usually after a disturbance. Zoning is supposed to prevent incompatible uses before neighbors pay the price.
There is a housing cost, too. Investors can bid on homes using projected nightly rental revenue, competing against families whose budgets depend on local wages. A peer-reviewed 2024 study of Irvine, California, found that long-term rents fell about 3% within two years after the city enforced its short-term rental restrictions, primarily because long-term rental supply increased. Vacation rentals didn’t create Florida’s housing affordability problem, but they can make it worse.
Defenders invoke property rights: “It’s my house. I can do what I want with it.”
But the neighbors own property, too. Their legitimate interests don’t disappear because someone else sees an opportunity to profit. Owning a house has never meant an unlimited right to operate any business there.
In 2024, Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed Senate Bill 280, which would have further restricted local regulation of vacation rentals. He wrote that vacation rental markets “are far from uniform across the various regions of the state.” He was right. A resort district and a Cape Coral residential street aren’t interchangeable.
I support home rule within constitutional limits. Communities that welcome vacation rentals should be free to allow them. Those that want to preserve residential neighborhoods should be able to draw sensible zoning boundaries, with due process and fair treatment for existing lawful uses.
Before the 2027 legislative session, I urge Cape Coral residents to contact their state representative and senator and ask them to revise Section 509.032(7)(b) to restore meaningful local zoning authority.
Your guests are on vacation. Your neighbors aren’t.
Lyman Epp
Cape Coral