I live in Sarasota County and we have similar problems with homeowners on the beach. These multi million dollar plus homeowners don't want us trashy folk on "their" beach. The way the laws of ownership are written make it private property up to a specific point, which for ease of enforcement, that has been deemed the mean water line. Basically it says that if the sand is "hard" it is public but if the sand is "soft" it's private.

Now we have the few homeowners that are just plain stupid but would call the sheriff's office to get trespasser(s) off their property. Sometimes it would be a family or a couple that didn't want to be crowded on the public beach so they walked 100 yards down the beach and put down their towels. You can say that we should go after the "real" criminals, which I used to hear all the time when I would stop someone for a traffic violation, however the law is in the favor of the landowner because technically he or she owns up to the hard sand line. Ridiculous, yes but it's still their property.

As for setting up a business that's still yet another problem and if the land ownership is anything like what I just explained here in Sarasota then the person is utilizing private property to operate an illegal business. Taking aside the benefit of the business, the land owners still have the right to complain. We all would like to think that in paradise people are chill but the truth of the matter is that this is these people's homes.

I live on a now defunct golf course and I would be upset if someone came into my yard and started selling sandwiches and beverages. As a cop I never patrolled the beaches looking for people setting up towels on others' "property" but if they called us for enforcement we had no choice but to deal with it.