For more information, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n“You would hope that those fines would deter that type of reoccurring behavior,” Cape Coral City Council Member Jennifer Nelson-Lastra said.<\/p>\n
The fee increase comes after ongoing issues with some rental properties in the city. <\/p>\n
One waterfront neighborhood in south Cape Coral has dealt with a short-term rental that neighbors say brings loud parties and doesn’t follow the seven-day stay requirement. <\/p>\n
The same owner operates another rental that was charged thousands of dollars in fines this year.<\/p>\n
Erin Maher owns a home next to the problematic property and also operates hers as a rental when she’s not staying there. She believes the rule-breaking hosts are deliberately ignoring city council directives.<\/p>\n
“They basically are snubbing the council,” Maher said.<\/p>\n
However, Maher doesn’t think the fee increase will solve the underlying problems.<\/p>\n
“I think that the application fee is really targeting the good, responsible homeowners and hosts that want the same thing,” Maher said.<\/p>\n
Nelson-Lastra emphasized that the city isn’t trying to punish responsible hosts. She says the additional revenue will fund resources to track down hosts who aren’t following regulations and fine them.<\/p>\n
“We would hope that those fines wake them up,” Nelson-Lastra said.<\/p>\n
Maher believes stricter enforcement measures would be more effective than fee increases.<\/p>\n
“A three night minimum, I think would be a really good balance for hosts,” Maher said. “I think revoking their license and having a strict enforcement officer here shutting down their operation would.”<\/p>\n
The city says the registration fee change will be based on the renewal date for each property, and they will send out reminder notices to property owners.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CORAL, Fla. \u2014 Cape Coral began raising its rental registration fees for short-term rentals on January 1,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[11814,3862,17573,209,263,211,210,6024,53554,1292,53187,264,17483],"class_list":["post-102802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-airbnb","tag-bella-line","tag-bing-news","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-florida","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-city-of-cape-coral","tag-erin-maher","tag-facebook","tag-fines","tag-fox-4","tag-host"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}