The Collier County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to consider implementing a local ordinance requiring landlords to give their tenants 60 days written notice upon increasing their yearly rental rate by more than 5%.

The ordinance, which upon passing will be known as the Collier County Fair Notice to Tenant Ordinance, was dismissed by the commissioners in May. However, the ordinance was brought back to the board upon the increasing issue of lack of affordable housing.

Although the ordinance seems simple in nature, there are some concerns about unintended consequences from instilling further regulation.

Danielle Hudson, vice president of public policy at the Naples Area Board of Realtors, spoke during public comment about how this ordinance could cause more harm than good by discouraging landlords from owning a rental. Hudson referenced the eviction moratorium implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic which shut down many rental businesses.

“If you recall, for two and a half years, landlords were under the federal eviction moratorium and during that time, landlords were unable to evict tenants, and in many cases, they were unable to collect rents even though their tenants may have been gainfully employed or accepting federal dollars,” Hudson said. “This caused a maelstrom of concern in the market and in fact, we’re told by the National Rental Home Council that one in four single-family home rentals were actually put on the market because the mom-and-pop owners of those properties felt it was better to get out of business and to remain owners of these rental properties.”

Major surrounding cities like Miami, Tampa and Orlando have already implemented 60-day notices. However, Hudson doesn’t think this ordinance is suitable in the Southwest Florida market where rentals are already in short supply.

“It is being lumped in with these actions that were taken by the federal government and also by local municipalities as being something that would disallow them to utilize their private property rights,” Hudson said. “So we feel that we may continue to see an acceleration of rentals being sold, or switching over from longer term to short-term rentals, thus exacerbating the problem that we have in our tight rental market.”

Elizabeth Radi represents the Collier County Tenant Union and sees this ordinance as a way to give locals a sense of security that the government is working to help find housing for all.

“We can sit here and argue all day long and we can say it’s a ‘feel good,’ but you know what? When the rubber meets the road, we have more homeless people now than we could ever imagine, this crisis is horrible,” Radi said. “It’s worse than before Ian, now we have nowhere to run, we have nowhere to go. We have to either figure something out, we need to give them hope, we need to give them an understanding that we can be on their side to that we can keep the working class here.”

Commissioner Rick LoCastro is a member of the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and voiced against this ordinance since the first time it was brought to him on the board. He doesn’t see this regulation as a solution to any of the major housing issues plaguing the community.

“All the examples that we heard at the podium are all very emotional, and all very accurate, and this ordinance does nothing to fix any of those things,” LoCastro said. “So those were side discussions that require a different solution, this is not the solution to any of those things. This won’t solve homelessness, this won’t keep the landlord from making their rent $4,000 and all those examples we heard. And, you know, I’m not a big fan of just passing things just as a feel good.”

Florida Statute 83.57 establishes the landlord and tenant relationship and states that for rentals, tenants must receive a 60-day notice prior to the end of any annual period. Despite this, commissioner Andy Solis sees this potential ordinance for Collier County as an extra reminder for tenants who may struggle to find an alternate place to live upon the end of their lease.

“It would give [tenants] a little more heads up that they need to go find a place which will be very hard to find, I think that’s all it will do,” Solis said. “And, you know, we’ve heard from the community that there is some value to that for some people.”

The county commissioners voted 3-2 in favor of pushing the ordinance to an official hearing, with McDaniel and LoCastro dissenting.