Home News Southold Town Government Short-term rental issues pop up nationwide; locals left homeless by steep rents...

Short-term rental issues pop up nationwide; locals left homeless by steep rents beg for relief

As residents on both sides of the short-term rental issue continue to raise concerns, communities in tourist areas across the country are grappling with similar issues — and locals say they’re being priced out of their hometowns.

The Southold Town planning board discussed the town’s draft code this week, which currently would require a seven-day minimum for short term rentals. The planning board said they support the draft; planning board member Jim Rich asked how much of a problem the issue was, really, in Southold.

Others on the board said it depends on where residents live, for those who live next door to a home rented on sites such as airbnb, “it’s a big deal,” they said, with many expressing concerns about excessive turnover.

Nation struggles with short-term rental issues

Meanwhile, tourist communities are struggling to find ways to handle the growing issue. Last week in Santa Monica, according to NPR, the city council adopted a new ordinance banning the rental of an entire unit for less than 30 days and requiring those who participate in home-sharing to obtain a business license from the city and pay a 14 percent hotel tax. The law takes effect June 15, NPR said; the article also states that proceeds from the hotel tax will help fund enforcement efforts and an analyst to find illegal rentals online.

“The events in Santa Monica show that this is not a challenge facing only Southold but, part of a larger trend as communities throughout the country try to address it,” Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell told SoutholdLOCAL this week. “While Santa Monica’s legislation is rather stringent, clearly short-term rentals impact the community there in a negative way. Similar to Santa Monica, Southold relies on tourism as an economic driver. However, we can’t let our goals of promoting tourism eclipse our need to protect the character of our community. That balance is what we are trying to accomplish with our pending code.”

In San Francisco, according to the Wall Street Journal, the board of supervisors passed legislation in October legalizing short term rentals of less than 30 days, which had previously been banned. WSJ said the “so-called Airbnb law’ went into effect in February and placed new restrictions on shor-term renters, including that “renters must be permanent residents of San Francisco and enter their names in a city registry for hosts, and entire houses can be rented only for up to 90 days a year total. The law also imposes a tax on rentals and requires listings to carry liability insurance.”

At Tuesday’s town board meeting, one resident asked how the town board would identify properties rented for short-term use.

Russell said the new legislation features the “element of presumption. If you are advertising on a website we can assume you are in violation of the code. The intent to advertise on that site is to skirt town code, presuming this legislation is adopted.”

Locals left homeless by steep rents cry out for new code

Meanwhile, Laura Moore of Mattituck cried out for the town to develop a comprehensive rental code for year-round rentals.

Councilwoman Jill Doherty said that’s the next step; the short-term rental issue will be addressed first and then the town plans to work on developing a rental code.

Moore said she was born in Greenport, grew up in Mattituck, shops local and yet, can’t afford to rent an apartment in her hometown.

“Right now, I’m homeless,” she said. Moore said she spent nights in Maureen’s Haven, a local homeless program, this winter, where many nights, she found others who “had just seen a streak of bad luck. We’re being priced out of Southold Town.”

A friend, she said, is living in a hotel in Riverhead with three children.  “Everyone is suffering. I really hope the board takes care of people who grew up here. It’s just not fair.”

Russell said one of the motivating forces on the town trying to get a handle on short term rentals is that the board is aware that some homes are being purchased for short-term rentals only, removing vital housing stock from the town’s inventory.

Public hearing on short term rentals set for June 2

 

A public hearing on the short-term rental issue will be held June 2 at 4:35 p.m.

The board has agreed to include a period of no less than seven nights in the proposed legislation, in regard to the length of short term rentals in Southold Town.

Discussion has been ongoing about whether to set the time frame as no less than 30 nights, 14 nights, or seven nights; no final decision will be made until the board has heard the public weigh in on the issue.

Councilman Jim Dinizio said the town code is clear that two-day short term rentals are not allowed currently.

Dinizio added that he would like the public to hear, from the outset, just what consequences those who violate the short term rental law will have to face.

Russell said for years, the town has allowed for seven night short term rentals with no issues or complaints; the number would allow for local business owners to still reap economic benefits, he said. One concern he harbors, however, is that seven nights will still mean the potential for weekly turnover.

“My concern is that we are solving a problem without solving the problem,” Russell said.

Doherty said the draft is still a proposal. “We have to start somewhere,” she said, adding that if the solution doesn’t work, new code can be created.

The changes, Doherty said, are just an expansion of the already existing code.

The board also needs to decide if, when adopted, the code will be adopted right away or with an effective date down the road, allowing for some currently existing reservations to be grandfathered in.

Russell suggested the effective date be 60 days from adoption, to allow for some summer reservations to go forward but with the legislation in place by the busy fall season on the North Fork.

Short-term rental issue has residents riled up for months

Earlier in April, residents took to the podium to air their views; some felt the board should decide upon a minimum of no less than 31 days for a rental.

“The issue of threshold has still not yet been decided,” Russell said at the time.

Residents suggested the town form a committee to determine who’s renting their homes on sites such as airbnb.com and then carry through with enforcement.

Other concerns raised were that groups could rent the home but really only are about one weekend of the month, when they would be “annoying neighbors” with loud parties, a sea of strange cars and other issues during the “prime summer” months. On the flipside, Chris Baiz said ordinances do exist for parking and noise mitigation. He said he did not want to see headlines reading, “Southold denies tourism”, something he does not think the area could afford, as it’s long been a tourist destination. His concern was taking 1,500 homes out of the summer rental stock and said if that happened, rezoning of land to allow for additional hotel rooms should be considered. Young families, he added, visit for shorter periods, such as a week.

At a March code committee meeting, Assistant Town Attorney Stephen Kiely discussed a draft of a new definition that could be added to the town’s zoning chapter.

Kiely said the issue has been discussed for approximately six to eight months, beginning with a year-round rental law, then scaled down to a short-term law that would require a permitting process and would allow for fines.

The third, and most recent manifestation, Kiely said, would just add a section on transient uses to the prohibited use section of the town’s zoning code.

The added text would define the meaning of a transient rental property as “a dwelling unit which is occupied for habitation as a residence by person, other than the owner or a family member of the owner, and for which rent is received by the owner, directly or indirectly, in exchange for such residential occupation for a period of an as-yet-to be determined number of nights.”

Under the new definition, transient rentals would have to be a dwelling unit lawfully and validly permitted as an accessory apartment in Southold; properties used exclusively for non-residential commercial purposes in any zoning district; any legally operating commercial hotel/motel business or B & B operating exclusively and catering to transient clientele; or a dwelling unit located on Fisher’s Island, due to the unique characteristics of the island and the lack of formal lodging for guests.

Keily said “presumptions” can be used to determine if a dwelling unit is being used as a transient rental.

Those presumptions include whether the unit is offered on a short-term rental website, such as airbnb.com, Home Away, and VRBO.

The presumptions, Keily said, are rebuttable with evidence that the unit is not used for transient rentals.

First, Kiely said, the town has to “make a baseline determination” of what type of short-term rental it will permit, as well as choose the minimum number of nights, or the time period, a potential guest can stay legally.

Enforcement is critical

No matter what regulations are adopted, the board agreed enforcement is critical. Currently, the town has only one code enforcement officer, the board discussed hiring a second code enforcement officer part-time, to also work on nights and weekends.

In Southampton, Kiely said, the town has code enforcement under the helm of the town attorney — a move the Southold Town board is weighing — and fines collected help to finance the enhanced code enforcement efforts.

Cutchogue attorney Abigail Field said private homeowners supported the idea of fines as a revenue stream that could upgrade the town’s code enforcement effort. Field said if weekend short-term rentals were banned, the economy would suffer, as, according to her informal survey, most short-term renters come for weekends.

If served a notice of violation, the homeowner would have five to 10 days to fix the situation, Kiely said. “If the behavior doesn’t change, the homeowner would be issued an appearance ticket” but the individual could still “lawyer up” and the case could be tied up for months with adjournments. The “quickest and fastest way is to go to the Supreme Court and get an injunction to shut the house down,” he said. “Presumptions give you the gateway into the court quicker,” rather than having to send a code enforcement officer to sit outside a house at night and on weekends, he said.

The presumption, Kiely said, would be that any home listed on airbnb or other short-term site for less than the number of days allowed by the town would be in violation, allowing a code enforcer to pinpoint the offenders easily.

No matter what number of days the board and public decide upon, “If we can’t enforce it, there’s no reason to have it,” Dinizio said.

Russell added that in most instances, the public was not calling because of “rogue” homes with loud music or bad behavior but instead, it’s the “unsettled feeling of turnover” residents experience due the constantly changing faces and cars in homes nearby.

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