More cities in Broward County are trying to regulate residential property owners who advertise their homes online with Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms.
Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach last month began enforcing new regulations for short-term rentals, which have turned parts of South Florida into areas to party all night long.
The new regulations for short-term rentals in Deerfield and Pompano are similar to those elsewhere in Broward, including Wilton Manors, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Hollywood, Hallandale Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Dania Beach.
Broward city bylaws generally require owners of short-term rental properties to register them. Regulations also limit noise and the number of guests in short-term rentals, and they prohibit parking cars in ditches or trying to park too many in an area.
Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is implementing new regulations for short-term rental properties to encompass two to four-unit residential buildings, regulate music, and limit hours of use of community pools.
Compliance can be uneven. In Hollywood, for example, city officials suspect that 785 residences are available for short-term rentals. But owners of only 52 people have registered since the city government began requiring registration last year.
City officials have considered changing the noise code in Hollywood to require quiet hours between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. Pompano Beach plans to ban outdoor musical performances on properties registered as short-term rentals.
City of Hollywood officials have also taken into account the rules Deerfield and Pompano have enacted to require periodic inspections of short-term rental properties and have posted contact information for owners outside of their properties.
The evolution of Florida state laws has contributed to a local patchwork of rules and regulations that Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms face.
The state government enacted a law in 2011 prohibiting local governments from regulating what it calls “vacation rentals,” defined as residential properties rented more than three times a year for less than 30 days at a time. . The law exempted local governments, including the city of Miami Beach, which began regulating short-term rentals before the law was enacted on July 1, 2011.
But the state then relaxed its preemption on local regulations in 2014 by enacting a revision of the 2011 law allowing cities to require vacation rentals to register with them. But the 2014 law prohibits cities from regulating the length or frequency of short-term rentals.[Sun-Sentinel] – Mike Seemuth
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