Cynical Attempt To Fight Zoning

The East Hampton Town Planning Board now has in its collective lap a request that could turn the whole town zoning code on its ear. The board has been asked to retroactively okay the Dunes, a “luxury, inpatient rehabilitation center,” in its own words, which sprang up in a house in Northwest Woods about five years ago.

In a bizarre determination that was later reversed, the then-top town building inspector said the facility’s inpatients functioned as a family, thereby skirting the law about group houses, which provides that no more than four unrelated adults may live under one roof. It would be more than ridiculous to think that a facility with “clinical protocols and client relationships with counselors, advocates, and advisers,” according to the Dunes’s website, could be likened to a family home. But that is what it claims. Also noteworthy is that its website refers to those who stay there as “clients,” which ought to be a fairly big clue about what the Dunes actually is.

Once the town rethought the goofball ruling, the Dunes initiated a federal discrimination lawsuit, which was dismissed in 2015. It now says it will take the issue all the way to the United States Supreme Court. This is a shame; the Dunes’s management should have found a facility in a proper location instead of trying to draw the town into a cynical and potentially expensive legal battle.

The danger for the town is that this is not just about money. If the Dunes prevails in winning special status, it might threaten the town’s basic one-house, one-family rule, which was intended to protect community character and prevent overcrowding. Officials already struggle with illegally occupied dwellings. A ruling in the Dunes’s favor might make enforcement all the more difficult. For an organization dedicated to doing good, a legal attack on the town’s fundamental zoning is an unfortunate contradiction, if not an outright affront.