No more $20,000 fines: Miami Beach lowers penalty for short-term rental violations
Violating short-term rental rules on Miami Beach will no longer cost hosts between $20,000 and $100,000 following a City Commission vote on Wednesday reducing the fines, considered among the most severe in the country.
The reduced fine structure, prompted by a 2018 lawsuit, will begin at $1,000 for first violations and $5,000 for repeat violations, as outlined in existing Florida statute.
The new fines are “a lot lower” than what has been on the books in Miami Beach since 2016, Mayor Dan Gelber said at Wednesday’s meeting. The city bans vacation rentals, such as those advertised on platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway, in most residential neighborhoods.
The commission unanimously approved the fine change Wednesday following a preliminary vote in September.
“The court ruled that our fines were higher than provided in state statute,” Gelber said at the September meeting. “So this essentially moves them to the ceiling of the state statute.”
The 2018 lawsuit, filed by a Miami Beach property owner named Natalie Nichols, challenged the city’s fine structure and its broad restrictions on vacation rentals. After a Miami-Dade circuit judge struck down the city’s fine structure, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the ruling.
While the lower court “invalidated the prohibition on short-term rentals in its entirety,” the appellate court ruled that the city can continue to enforce its restrictions despite the fine reductions, according to its Sept. 23 opinion.
“The Third District’s ruling of preemption was limited to the city’s fines and did not find that the city’s short-term rental restrictions themselves were unlawful,” Miami Beach city attorney Raul Aguila wrote in a memo to the City Commission on Wednesday. “The court further expressly upheld the severability of the fines from the remainder of the city’s short-term rental regulations, thus confirming the validity of all remaining provisions in the city’s short-term rental laws.”
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 11:49 AM.
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