Short-term rentals, at least some without village permits, are causing problems for residents of North Haven Manor and Actors Colony Road in North Haven, according to Susan Reed, president of the North Haven Manor Association.
In a recent letter to Mayor Jeff Sander, Ms. Reed wrote that the association board wanted to meet with the mayor “to discuss necessary steps to curtail these illegal rentals and for the village to enforce the existing North Haven code.”
“Several of our residents attended the recent North Haven Village [Board of Trustees] meeting” on July 9, she wrote, “to express our concern about residents of North Haven not having required rental permits, the increase in renting to groups of unrelated people, and the resulting parties and excessive noise that are adversely impacting our quality of life.
“It has become a regular occurrence for our residents to have to call the Southampton police over noise complaints from the houses of residents who do not have rental permits. Our neighbors on Actors colony Road are also being affected by the loud noise from parties which travels over water.”
Mayor Sander in an interview this week said he would invite association members to the next Village Board meeting on August 6 to further discuss the issue. Meanwhile, “We’re looking at the code,” he said, and acknowledged there are “lots of code changes we need to make.”
One problem, he said, was that the code refers only to summer rentals; another is it has no duration limits.
“I think the issue is one or two people who kind of violate” the rules of “good behavior,” he said, “and cause disturbances. A lot of people are upset. We want to respond and write letters” to the property owners.
In her letter to him, Ms. Reed wrote, “We are in a new era of Airbnb and other short-term rentals, which are threatening to get out of hand.”
Mr. Sander said in the interview the “Airbnb is not itself the problem. We need to tighten a lot of things in the code,” and will be discussing that at the August 6 meeting. He said he thought that the village’s Clerk-Treasurer Eileen Tuohy was drafting letters to be sent to property owners.
The village has never fined anyone for code violations involving rentals, he said. “We’ve never gone to the length of doing it and now maybe we have to.”
