- April 18, 2024
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About 40 people protested at Ocean Hammock April 13. Protesters said they felt Florida Sen. Travis Hutson has not been responsive to their concerns about vacation rentals. (Photo courtesy of Mary Kay Ulsamer)
Local residents protested in opposition to proposed legislation that would bar municipalities from regulating vacation rentals. (Photo courtesy of Mary Kay Ulsamer)
Protestors said they felt Florida Sen. Travis Hutson has not been responsive to their concerns about vacation rentals. (Photo courtesy of Mary Kay Ulsamer)
About 40 people chanted slogans and held signs at Ocean Hammock the afternoon of April 13 to protest against Florida Sen. Travis Hutson's position on vacation rental regulation.
The protestors want cities and counties to be able to regulate vacation rentals. Proposed state legislation would give regulatory authority for vacation rentals to the state alone, stripping cities' and counties' ability to regulate the rentals.
"We're here today because we are very disappointed with the support — or, I should say, lack of support — from Sen. Hutson," Jan Cullinane, the Ocean Hammock resident who organized the protest, said as the protest began.
Flagler County has been enforcing a local vacation rental ordinance designed to limit the rentals' impact on neighboring homes, and county commissioners have opposed the proposed state legislation.
Hutson has proposed what he's called a compromise amendment that would allow municipalities to regulate rentals, but only if they regulate all residential rentals equally — and Flagler County officials have said that would not work. It would mean the county to would have to perform the same inspections on residential properties that are on year-long leases as it would on rentals that are continuously rented out to vacationers. That would increase staff time and cost, and needlessly inconvenience landlords who lease their property to long-term renters, county officials said.
The state has wrangled over vacation rentals in the past. A 2011 law pre-empted local control, giving regulatory authority to the state alone. That left communities unable to deal with rentals that caused disruptions in residential areas, and residents protested.
In 2014 — after much lobbying by local officials from Flagler County — then-Florida Sen. John Thrasher and Hutson, who was at the time a member of the Florida House, filed companion House and Senate bills that were passed into law and returned regulatory control of the rentals to municipalities.
But that change frustrated many involved with the vacation rental industry, who've supported the new proposed legislation.
Cullinane said she feels like Hutson isn't now responding to residents' concerns.
"Most of us, believe me, have never protested before in our lives, and it took a lot to galvanize people to the point that we felt we needed to stand together and say something," she said. "We feel strongly that Sen. Hutson is now no longer representing or listening to his constituents."
Cullinane said she's not opposed to the idea of vacation rentals, per se. "We’ve all rented," she said. "I’ve got three millenial kids; we’re all into the sharing economy." But, she said, many rentals are built as investments by people who don't live locally and don't have to deal with the neighborhood problems caused by a constant rotation of vacationers through properties that function as miniature hotels for dozens of people at a time.
"We’re going protest, we will continue to write, we will continue to make our voices heard," she said.
