INTIMIDATION FOR FUN AND PROFIT: Miami Targets Homeowners Who Opposed to Airbnb Ban.

“We are now on notice for people who did come here and notify us in public and challenge us in public,” Daniel Alfonso, Miami city manager, told the Miami Herald. “I will be duly bound to request our personnel to enforce the city code.”

Mayor Thomas Regalado reportedly suggested the same course of action while speaking to a local radio station about the city’s evolving policy on short-term rentals and Airbnb, according to Miami Herald reporter David Smiley:

Yes, everyone who spoke at the hearing voluntarily turned over their information to the city. They’re easy targets, for sure.

Still, the notion that city officials would single-out people who spoke up against a public policy—those who “challenge us in public,” as Alfonso put it—simply because they spoke up in public is quite disturbing. Instead of focusing on nuisance tenants or short-term rentals that are drawing complaints from neighbors (if there are any), they are choosing specifically to target members of the community who are engaged in the political process and are trying to make their voices heard.

Miami might be taking an ill-advised lesson from nearby Miami Beach, which has led the way in Florida’s fight against letting residents do as they please with their own property. As Reason has previously reported, the city issued more than $1.6 million in fines for homesharing last year, with individual fines running as high as $20,000.

Think of Miami’s city government as the tourism industry’s protection racket, and you won’t go far wrong.