Rental Safety Scorecard: California, Florida, and Texas

For ten years now, David’s been giving you stories of his travels and adventures in 100+ countries.

However, as many of you know, some of the best adventures are taking place right here in the U.S.  From the surf of Southern California to the fiery Texas Hill Country, and down to the vibrant Miami street life, we live in the short-term rental (STR) era. Take heed, not all rentals are created equal, nor are the laws that protect you when you are in them.

For a trip to these top three states, here’s what you should know about the safety landscape and about your rights as a guest.

California

California is a travel industry titan, but it’s also one of the most regulated places in the world for platforms like Airbnb and VRBO.

Big Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have rigorous ‘primary residency’ laws, which mean your host will almost always be a local living on-site or near the site instead of your nameless company.

California is uniquely protective of travelers. Survivors of personal injury and security breaches in rentals have a unique legal advantage under state law:

• You can sue for civil damages regardless of whether criminal charges are pressed.
• Statute of Limitations (SoL): Because of the trauma that comes from sexual abuse, and the courage it takes for a victim to make themselves public, California has (recently) widened/extended the window within which survivors can come forward.

Florida

Florida can sometimes get 4.9+ million visitors in one peak tourist season. So, as you can probably imagine, the volume of rentals is spectacularly high.

In fact, the 2024/2025 data shows Florida as one of the safer states for securing rentals compared with its extreme visitor figure (44th ‘danger’ status). The bulk of that is due to the high density of gated communities and professionalized property management in places like Orlando and Naples.

Though Florida is statistically ‘safe,’ the legal system operates differently.

Here’s a quick example of what we mean by that:

South Florida is typically among the top 5 districts when it comes to federal sentencing for crimes of a sexual nature. This basically heavily underscores the ‘unwelcome’ fact that fewer incidents ARE statistically lower (per capita), but when they do happen, they’re very aggressively prosecuted.

And when you think about the fact that Florida has A LOT of corporate-owned rentals, which means that when there’s a safety legal overstep, it’s you vs an entire company (basically an army of lawyers) instead of you vs. the homeowner.

Texas

The State of Texas has seen a massive rise in STR listings from the state with its ‘Keep Austin Weird’ vibe to the high-end lofts of Dallas.

Every year, Texas has more than 18,000 sexual assault incidents (statewide, over the past few years). While only about 3% of such events take place in hotels or motels, the growing prevalence of apartments without surveillance presents new and exciting challenges for travelers.

Texas has very specific Property Codes (92.0161) that let tenants (and guests in some cases) terminate a stay or lease early if they are victims of sexual assault. This is an important ‘escape hatch’ that many travelers aren’t aware of.

Texas law tends to be more oriented toward requiring a guest to document the incident immediately through a ‘licensed health care provider’ or ‘peace officer’ to trigger these protections than in California.

Travel Safety Comparison 2025

So basically, then it comes to the primary travel risk, in California it’s GTA (not the game, but the crime), and that’s particularly prevalent in major cities like San Francisco and L.A. In Florida, you’ve got coastal storm risks. Regarding Florida crime, urban areas are known for pickpockets (especially during tourist season). In Texas, you’ve got to think about border-related issues, especially in South Texas.

When it comes to ‘guest protection’, CA has strong tenant-leaning laws, and civil suits are quite common and regulated. In Florida, there’s a high focus on host licensing (DBPR), and prosecution is quite aggressive, which is great to prevent crime.

So, if you were to rank these three states in terms of rental safety, it would look something like this:

1. Florida: top 10 (STRs).
2. California: mid-range.
3. Texas: low-tier.

Expected, unexpected? Hard to say. But it is what it is.

With that being said, that doesn’t mean that you still won’t find a perfectly safe rental in Texas or that you won’t have a horrible experience in Florida.

The Grey Area

Most booking platforms online operate in a legal ‘grey zone’, simply because they exploit tactics (which are technically within the law) that don’t necessarily exploit you, but they work in their favor from a profit standpoint.

So, here are safety concerns tied to short-term rental stays that you should focus on if you’re looking to book one on one of these platforms:

• Mandatory Arbitration: Almost all platforms will use mandatory arbitration to force any disputes that might arise into private sessions. What this does is it keeps any incidents (regardless of nature) out of the public record and away from a jury. Basically, their name/reputation doesn’t get stained, regardless of what has happened.
• Negligent Security: Liability is often centered around what the host failed to do.
• When it comes to ‘negligent security’, there are also some common points of failure that you’ve got to think about:
• Lock Maintenance: Failure to change codes or provide secure deadbolts between guests.

Conclusion

As tourism flourished, it not only shrunk the world but also made everything so much more accessible. Not just because the regular Joe could get from point A to point B in 2-3 hours, but also because it didn’t suck your wallet dry.

But of course, once you get away from home, you also need some place to stay. And even though staying at a friend’s place is always amazing, that isn’t always possible. This is also the reason why you need to think about the safety of the place you’re visiting.

When you know what’s in front of you, you can travel confidently!