East Hampton Village homeowners who rent out their houses for 120 days or less annually will benefit from an amendment to the village code, unanimously adopted by the village board on Friday, that will allow them to collect the rental fees in one lump sum, meaning that they will no longer have to worry about tenants who attempt to terminate a rental early, or those who don’t make payments.
New York State passed a law in September, with backing from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., creating a seasonal-use rental registry that modifies the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, which prevented the collection of lump-sum rental fees, previously a common practice for summer rentals here. The 2019 law, which among other things set limits on rent increases, was chiefly intended to protect tenants in rent-regulated apartments in New York City.
Mr. Thiele pointed out in a recent release that “summer rentals are a vital part of the local economy on the East End. . . not only was the [tenant protection act] not intended to cover seasonal rentals, there is no documented problem with the practice of a single payment.”
The village board’s attorney, Vincent Messina, emphasized at Friday’s meeting that this new rental registry is not mandated. Only landlords seeking a single lump-sum payment will need to register their property with the village.
Registry is free, but requires certain information to be filed with the village clerk. This raised privacy concerns with David Gans, a frequent caller to the village board meetings. “You want copies of the lease. You want the layout of the home,” he said. “Is this all FOIL-able? Can people find out how much someone is charging for rent by simply providing an address?”
“The Freedom of Information Law has certain exceptions,” Mr. Messina replied. “If something falls within those exceptions, the information would be redacted or not released. . . this is about the minimum requirement that you need to comply with . . . state law.”
“If you want to benefit from the government, it always comes at a cost,” Mr. Messina added. “The cost isn’t determined by us, it’s determined by state law.”
“No one is obligated to do this, it’s only to help residents,” clarified Mayor Jerry Larsen. “If they don’t want to do it, they can still rent their homes, they just can’t collect the rent up front. Then they don’t have to do any registry.”
The new law will apply only to whole-house seasonal rentals, which the board defined as 120 days or less, in any part of the year. (The law was originally written to have applied only to the summer season, from May 15 to Sept 15.) It will not affect the village prohibition on short-term rentals. Houses in the village still cannot be rented for less than two weeks at a time.
Also on Friday, the board voted to alert bidders of its intention to improve the village-controlled Newtown Lane mid-block pedestrian crosswalk signs.
While the crosswalks on Route 27/Main Street are wider, and see more traffic, Route 27 is a state road and not under the village’s control. “I’m trying to encourage the state to improve the lighting,” said Dave Collins, superintendent of public works. “The answer I get from them is that they’ve put up the lit LED signage, and that’s their improvement.”
“They don’t do warning lights,” Mr. Collins added. “Then again, every crosswalk on state roads you pass by from Bridgehampton to Montauk has it. I’m trying to figure out with them how they go about upgrading it.”
“We’re looking at . . . our mid-block crosswalks first, and hopefully the state will take care of theirs,” he said. “We’re not putting up an entire system. We’re retrofitting our existing poles and signage with just the . . . warning signal. It would be visible from both sides of the crosswalk.”
Right now, said Mr. Collins, if a large truck were in front of your car, you could miss the signals. The new ones will be much more visible. “The in-ground lights are obsolete,” he said. “The plan is to remove those.”
“Did you ever hear back from the state about your request to do a crosswalk at the Getty on 27?” asked Rose Brown, a trustee.
Mr. Collins answered that the state had said a crosswalk there was feasible, and that “they’d put it in their pipeline” for installation. However, he said, it’s been nearly a year. He promised to follow up.
“It’s potentially so dangerous right there,” said Ms. Brown.
“It shouldn’t be a big deal for the state,” said Mayor Larsen. “There’s already a traffic light there.”
“We just got to get them to move on it,” said Mr. Collins.
Bids for the new crosswalk signage will be opened on March 22.
