The owner of a condo in Amelia Island is hoping to change Florida law to protect part-time residents like himself when a condo association changes its rules.

The Legislature is likely next spring to take up his cause, which Senate President Jim King called "a major issue around the state."

Stephen and Judy Comley, who spend five months a year on Frye Island in Maine, bought a waterfront condo at Piper Dunes North in Amelia Island seven years ago. They counted on being able to rent the unit for three or four months each summer to make their purchase financially feasible until they were ready to retire to Florida full time, Stephen Comley said. The couple have established Florida as their permanent residence.

At the time, renting units was legal, according to the association's documents. Two of the 28 owners at Piper Dunes North rented their units: the Comleys and one other owner.

Piper Dunes North, built in the early 1990s, consists of two seven-story waterfront buildings with two units per floor of 2,200 to 2,300 square feet that now start at $1-million, said Jack Healan Jr., president of the Amelia Island Co., which manages the property.

Starting in 1996, the Comleys rented their unit each summer to a small group of regular tenants who each stayed for about a month and came back year after year. Comley charged his short-term tenants $7,200 a month. None of the full-time residents ever complained about the tenants. The Comleys paid $465,000 for their unit, "and we were offered $1.3-million for it two years ago," he said.

In April 2000, the condo board proposed eliminating monthly rentals "to protect the overall value of Piper Dunes North," it told unit owners in a letter. It proposed minimum six-month rentals. Changing the rules required approval of two-thirds of the unit owners, and in July, unit owners amended their documents to allow rentals of no less than six months.

The Comleys protested, saying their regular tenants were not interested in six-month rentals, which also did not fit in with their plans for occupancy. Renting for the three or four months they're gone is necessary to "provide us with an income that we had counted on when we bought," the Comleys said in a letter to the board.

Healan, the manager, agreed: "It puts an economic hardship on someone who relied on that when they brought the property to supplement their carrying of the property until the point when they could use it full time," he said in a telephone interview.

The Comleys urged the board to grandfather them in, allowing shorter rentals until they sell their unit. But their association has stood firm, refusing to take up the matter again, even though the Comleys solicited letters from a number of other unit owners asking the board to reopen the matter and urging that the Comleys be grandfathered in. (The other owner who was renting is following the six-month minimum requirement, Comley said.)

Both the Comleys and their condo association were closely watching a Pinellas County case, Woodside v. Jahren, for support. In 1997, residents of the Woodside Village condo in Clearwater amended their documents to eliminate 12-month rentals, restricting them to only 9 months a year. That had the effect of making it unfeasible for long-term, permanent renters to live in the condo, since they would have to move out for three months of every year.

The Woodside association sued several owners to enforce the new leasing restriction. The Pinellas Circuit Court and, later, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of those owners and called the tougher restrictions on renting "arbitrary, discriminatory and oppressive."

People who buy in a condo association have a reasonable expectation that the deed restrictions that are in place at the time of purchase will prevail, the appeal court said. "Otherwise the rights and obligations created by a declaration (of condominium) could be in a constant state of flux."

But the condo association appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, and last year, the high court overturned the lower courts. "The Condominium Act provides broad authority for amending a declaration of condominium," the court said. 

"The owners knew when they purchased their units that they were subject to properly adopted amendments to the declaration, and the leasing restriction was such an amendment. The restriction did not violate public policy or the owners' constitutional rights," the court said.

The court also said that since condo law was created by the Legislature, any remedies such as grandfathering provisions should be devised by the Legislature as well.

Judge Peggy Quince agreed with the majority, but acknowledged the hardship to owners who purchased with the expectation they could rent their units. "The amendment has deprived these owners of a valuable right that existed at the time of purchase," she wrote.

She urged that "there should at least be some type of an "escape' provision for those unit owners whose substantial property rights are altered by amendments to declarations adopted after they acquire their property." 

Comley, 59, is a former nursing home administrator who gained national notoriety in the 1980s as a nuclear power plant safety whistle-blower and founder of a grass roots nuclear-safety organization called We the People. His mother lives in Pinellas County.

Now he is trying to generate legislative support for relief for those in his situation:

He has been in touch with Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach, who has written to House Speaker Johnnie Byrd urging that the House Judiciary Committee "study the prospect of grandfathering existing rental rights of existing owners."

Comley gained an audience in April with Jacksonville Republican King, the Senate president, and statewide condo authority Peter Dunbar to discuss his situation. A King spokeswoman said their office "is looking into" the matter.

King has urged Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, of the Senate Judiciary Committee to study the feasibility of grandfathering existing rental privileges until an owner sells a unit.

"It's safe to say that the Legislature, especially in the Senate, will spend some time debating the issue, looking at the effects of what the existing law is and finding some equitable way to protect both the buyer and the association," King said. "I suspect it will be one of the first things we discuss in the upcoming regular session."

"The current law could be interpreted in lots of different ways and is not clear," King said.

Besides the grandfather clause, King said, another possibility is to develop a formula for associations to reimburse owners when they are deprived of anticipated income because rentals are disallowed.

Comley appeared at a town hall meeting in August chaired by Rep. Julio Robaina, R-Miami, to hear complaints about condo associations.

The Florida Association of Realtors is considering looking into Comley's cause through a Department of Business and Professional Regulation task force investigating community association problems.

Comley says that as a Florida resident, he is concerned about the economic impact on the state of the Supreme Court decision. He fears that residents of other states who want to buy Florida condos will go elsewhere when they learn that, although they may be allowed to rent out their units now, that could change in the future. Comley offered copies of letters sent by out-of-state residents to King, saying, "They've put their retirement plans on hold until the law changes."

Comley, who intends to keep his condo at Piper Dunes North, said he doubts that any legislation will be effective retroactively, so it won't help him. "But it will help the person down the road. Put yourself in our position," he said. "How would you like to work for 40 years and have someone pull the rug out from under you?"