Take a Number, Please
A proposed East Hampton Town rental registry drew a number of property owners to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee’s meeting on Monday, many of them concerned about its potential impact.
Residents of the hamlet have long complained about overcrowded group houses in the summer, frequent turnover of tenants, and attendant noise, traffic, and other disturbances to the peaceful enjoyment of their own properties. The proposed law is modeled on Southampton’s registry, said East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee. Its intent, he said, is to allow better enforcement of “rentals that are currently, in many cases, illegal but difficult to enforce.”
The registry would require property owners to file a form with the town including the name, address, mailing address, and telephone number of the owner and any agent designated to act on their behalf, and the number of rooms and bedrooms in the rental property, as well as the bedrooms’ square footage. Also required would be an affidavit signed by the owner, a written certification from the architect or engineer stating that the property complies with town code and provisions, or an inspection by the building inspector. Property owners would be required to provide an affidavit attesting to the total number of persons who will occupy the property, the rental period, a valid certificate of occupancy, and an acknowledgment of responsibility for refuse removal.
The property would then be assigned a registry number that would have to be posted in any advertising. Should the proposed law be adopted, the town board would establish a registration fee. Failure to register would be punishable by a fine of between $150 and $1,500. For a first offense, a fine of between $3,000 and $15,000 would be assessed, $8,000 to $30,000 for a second. “This is a serious fine schedule, let’s put it thatway,” Mr. Cantwell said. Data on complaints received and prosecutions are kept according to hamlet, he said, and he expected to be able to provide such information at the committee’s next meeting.
“People have been renting their homes in this community as long as I’ve lived here,” he said. “It’s an important component of the community, people put their kids through college renting homes. It’s a long established way for people to generate additional income.” The intent of the proposed law, he said, is to “try to find a way to better police those tenants and/or landlords who are abusing residential neighborhoods and the existing codes in the town that are well established and we struggle with.”
If the town can’t enforce existing code, he was asked, “How are you going to enforce a new, more complicated one?” The law would create a database, he answered. “In addition . . . this sets forth very clearly for homeowners, tenants, and the town exactly what is a violation, what kinds of things can be presumed to be a violation,” such as two mailboxes on a property or multiple cars and services indicating more than one household within a single-family residence.
Southampton officials, Mr. Cantwell said, view the law as “an additional tool.” Compliance was initially slow, he said, with fewer registrations than hoped for, though that is building over time. “The truth is, this is not a perfect world. Can we predict exactly what the outcome of this will be? Is it going to solve all the problems? No, but is it another tool we could use? Yes.”
Before the online rental service Airbnb, said John Broderick of the committee, “people did quite well renting their homes, so I don’t see that this legislation is going to pull the bottom out of that market and make it collapse.” The proposed law, he said, is analogous to recent legislation pertaining to taxis and crowds at Indian Wells beach in Amagansett. “Just the fact that we’re talking about it means there’s a problem,” he said. “On my street it’s out of hand. I’ve seen a house rented four times in the last month-and-a-half.”
Mr. Cantwell also updated the committee on the plan to install a public restroom in the parking lot north of Main Street. He presented a preliminary blueprint of a structure with separate entrances for men and women that is consistent with the hamlet’s architecture. The structure will require the elimination of some parking spaces, he said, but the parking lot’s layout is also to be redesigned, with a resulting net increase in spaces. A decision will have to be made as to the building’s footprint and the number of parking spaces to be sacrificed to it. He asked that two or three committee members come to a meeting next Thursday at Town Hall to assist in making that determination. “This is not going to be complicated,” he said. “It’s a question of getting it down to what is needed and what looks nice.”