Camp Owner Vows to Challenge Town Law

Jay Jacobs, the owner of an East Hampton house that was cited last summer for being used as a dormitory for counselors at Mr. Jacobs’s Hampton Country Day Camp, is ready to challenge the town law that says no more than four unrelated people can live in a single-family house.

“You mean to say to me, if I buy a 15-bedroom mansion in East Hampton, I can only have four unrelated people?” he asked yesterday in a phone interview. “Everyone else has to be family? I would say that is an unconstitutional taking of my property.”

Sixty-one citations were issued last August for alleged violations at the Ocean Boulevard house, including overcrowding and lack of a certificate of occupancy — an enforcement effort that Mr. Jacobs called overzealous, with unfounded violations.

According to the town, 25 adults were living in a 2,940-square-foot, four-bedroom residence that had been configured to contain eight dormitory-style bedrooms. Those charges are before the East Hampton Town Justice Court, with the camp named as defendant. The house was in its current state when he purchased it, Mr. Jacobs said this week.

The town sought an injunction barring use of the residence for counselor housing. Mr. Jacobs and his attorneys have moved to have that motion dismissed, asserting that the town law limiting occupancy is unconstitutional. A hearing before the State Supreme Court earlier this week was adjourned until later this summer.

A co-owner and manager of the Hampton Country Day Camp in East Hampton and other camps, Mr. Jacobs also serves as the Nassau County Democratic Committee chairman. He said he would like to come to an amicable agreement with the town, but that he is prepared to pursue the question of the town code provision’s legality all the way to federal court.

“The town has a legitimate interest in making sure neighborhoods are quiet and have a certain character, and I respect that,” Mr. Jacobs said. “There are things the town has an interest in protecting. However, that does not mean that in order to do so the town can come up with an arbitrary number.”

The number of family members that can live in one house is not addressed by the town code, but a state building code that sets a minimum required square footage for each person sharing a bedroom does apply.

Under a current agreement with the court, eight counselors are right now living at the house, in compliance with that state code. There were no complaints about noise or other issues at the house last summer, Mr. Jacobs said, and housing for camp employees is desperately needed. “There are dozens of businesses like mine that have the same issues,” he said.

The town does not have the right to say how many people can live in a house, he said. “You cannot have unequal enforcement of the law,” he added, citing a town decision allowing the Ross School to house boarding students in residences.

In a 2009 decision, Tom Preiato, a former town building inspector, determined that students from the Ross School living together in single-family residences with “house parents” were the equivalent of a family, and so the practice was allowed under the code. However, last year when the school reportedly planned to use two eight-bedroom houses that were being put up in Springs as dormitories, neighborhood residents complained and town board members said they would seek to overturn the building inspector’s decision.

The legal definition of “family” also figured in another case that has been the subject of legal action.

Mr. Preiato had also initially ruled that residents of the Dunes, a residential substance abuse treatment center operating in a house in the Northwest Woods, constituted a single-family unit, but later reversed that decision, prompting a lawsuit against the town