Gansett’s Take on a Rental Registry

To support both a homeowner’s right to rent and East Hampton Town’s proposed rental registry is not a mutually exclusive stance, the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee was told at its meeting on Monday, and something must be done to curtail illegal rentals that are detrimental to quality of life.

The town board will hold a public hearing on a revised rental registry law next Thursday, at the American Legion in Amagansett at 6:30 p.m., after tabling a proposal that was criticized for being overly intrusive.

“I’m really concerned that we’re developing a problem that’s not going to be an easy fix later on,” Frank Riina, a Springs resident who has been working with the town board to draft a rental registry law, told the committee. Along with added noise and congestion, he said, multiple families living in single-family houses, dormitory-type arrangements for summer-camp staff and other workers, and share houses occupied by dozens of young adults are creating dangerous conditions for their inhabitants as well as for emergency responders, and playing havoc with school taxes, septic systems, and groundwater. A registry, he said, would address those problems as well as safeguard real estate values and the “single-family character of our community.”

“More and more people seem to realize what we already know: East Hampton is a great place,” Mr. Riina said. But with that realization has come the belief that “there is big money to be made in rental housing on the East End,” and some real estate agents are exploiting the situation. “It’s a false illusion of what our community is about,” he said.

“Why doesn’t code enforcement do more?” he asked. “They don’t have a depository of information about which houses are rented.” A registry, he said, “is a tool for code enforcement . . . When the code enforcement has a body of information, investigations are a lot quicker.”

Mr. Riina distributed a draft registration form and an inspection checklist. The former seeks the name and contact information of the property owner and agent, if any; the address, tax map number, number of rooms, and square footage of each bedroom of the rental property; length of tenancy, and number of tenants if known. The latter form is a 22-item questionnaire on which details such as the existence of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, a swimming pool and gate, stairway handrails, and lower-level sleeping area are to be listed. Registration would cost property owners $125 per year to cover administrative costs.

“Some people find this an invasion of privacy,” Mr. Riina said, but, he said, the proposed registry is far less demanding than those of other communities. “Owners who rent illegally need to be stopped, and we have the power to do that. I think we can do a better job of stopping illegal rentals if we have the rental registry,” he concluded, to applause.

“This is definitely a massive improvement” over the previous proposal, said Kieran Brew, a committee member who is a real estate salesman. However, he said, “the only people who are getting rich on short-term rentals . . . own stock in Airbnb,” the website on which such rentals are advertised. “They’re a problem for us — for us as neighbors, and as real estate agents. The problem we’re having is trying to understand . . . how this is going to fix or help with that.”

Some landlords have worried aloud that they will be held liable for violations committed by tenants without their knowledge. Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee, said that code enforcement officers “still have to do their due diligence. The fact that this law will enable them to do their job more efficiently doesn’t preclude the fact that they still have to ferret out the facts.” The proposed law is flexible enough, he said, for code enforcement personnel to “try to determine, based on the facts, who is responsible for whatever the illegality is.”

“We’re going to do the best we can to present the facts of this,” Mr. Cantwell said. “After that, it’s up to the community to decide.”