Three years ago, Folly Beach voters narrowly approved a cap on short-term rentals: 800 licenses, full stop. It was one of the most closely watched local elections in recent Lowcountry memory. Now the city is taking a magnifying glass to its own rules, and the old wounds are very much open.
City Hall on Center Street was packed on May 27 as residents, off-island homeowners, businesses and rental operators lined up to weigh in. The occasion: Folly is hiring a yet-to-be-named consulting firm to study the cap and recommend changes, and leaders wanted an earful first.
“We’re just trying to build that list that will be used for the proposed study,” Mayor Chris Bizzell told the Post and Courier. “We’re doing our best to do that, so that we can go into the study with an unbiased and an objective view of everything that’s being presented.”
The hour-long meeting split predictably. Some residents defended the strict regulations. Others described the cap’s toll on their finances and the island’s tight-knit fabric. One recurring lament: the well-worn Folly path of buying a home, renting it to cover costs, then retiring there full-time has quietly disappeared, because new owners face functionally zero available permits.
Common ground did surface around enforcement. The cap, several acknowledged, has cut noise complaints, party houses and illegally operating rentals, though some argued you didn’t need a cap to crack down on bad actors. Another idea floated: stop regulating rentals through a business-license ordinance and switch to zoning, which could lift the cap in commercial districts or bar rentals in certain residential ones.
“People can live where they want to live, how they want to live, and that makes sense to me,” resident Niel Brugal told City Council.
The firm Folly hires later this year will sift through all the public comments and “functional concerns,” said City Administrator Aaron Pope, then lay out paths forward: adjusting the number of permits, carving out exceptions for medical hardships and inheritances, or eliminating the cap in pockets of the city. Council expects to make any changes in the fall or winter, ahead of the 2027 business-license year.
The backstory matters here. Folly has wrestled with rentals since 2010, adding a strike system, long-term-versus-short-term distinctions, and finally the 800-license cap that narrowly passed in 2023. Adjustments followed: inheritable licenses, medical-hardship carve-outs, a two-tiered waitlist.
And the kicker that tells you everything about supply and demand on a barrier island: since the waitlist opened in 2024, not a single person has made it off. For anyone watching Charleston’s broader fight over who gets to live where, Folly is the test kitchen.
This is a summary of an article published in the Post & Courier. Click here if you’d like to read that article.
