Miami Beach, FL Rental Inspections: Tenant Complaint Process (2026)

Section 58-363, in Chapter 58's Rental Housing article (Division 2, Buildings Unfit for Human Habitation), gives tenants an affirmative right to raise complaints about their rental unit at any time and in any form, oral or written, and lets them route that complaint to the landlord, the landlord's agent, or "any proper governmental agency" such as the city's code compliance division. Subsection (b) protects the tenant on the other side of that complaint: management of a rental unit that has been complained against or criticized may not coerce, retaliate against, or discriminate against a tenant or tenant group because they raised a grievance.

That protection has a limit built into subsection (c): it is unlawful for anyone to willfully and knowingly file a complaint under this section without probable cause and for the purpose of harassment, so the grievance right is not a shield for bad-faith reports aimed at a landlord or neighbor. Sec. 58-364 clarifies that this tenant-grievance right supplements, rather than replaces, any other county, state or federal protection, so a Miami Beach tenant can still pursue remedies under Florida's Chapter 83 landlord-tenant statute or file directly with the county in parallel. The article's general penalty section, Sec. 58-336, governs violations of any provision within Article IV, including the harassment-complaint offense in Sec. 58-363(c).