Greenport Short Term Rentals Possibly Spotlighted in New Study

With no answers in sight to the short-term rental issue in Greenport, the village board, at its work session Thursday night, decided to bring in a fresh eye and seek new solutions.

Greenport Village Mayor George Hubbard said he and Trustee Doug Roberts had spoke with Jo Anne Durovich, PhD, a professor at St. Joseph’s College, who is working on a study and regional plan for Suffolk County. Durovich, Hubbard said, has volunteered her graduate students, who’d like to focus on Greenport as part of their project, studying the rental situation countywide.

During the study, the students would come to Greenport, interview residents, and offer suggestions. “They’d like to use Greenport as a model,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard said Roberts has met with Durovich and moving forward, there would be no cost to the village to participate in the study.

“They’d be doing free work, to see what our rental stock looks like, what it will take to get more jobs here — that goes hand in hand with the housing issue,” he said. “The goal is to guide us long term,” focusing on issues including how short-term rentals are affecting the village’s long term potential, as well as the economic impact of short-term rentals, Roberts said.

After the meeting, he added, “I am eager to support the mayor on the housing affordability issue, and thrilled that Professor Durovich’s Institute for Attainable Homes sees in our village what I see: an opportunity to be a shining example for other communities for how people of all socio-economic backgrounds can live together through a diversity of year-round and seasonal rental housing options.”

Roberts believes the research Durovich and her students will conduct will provide valuable data the village does not currently have about the potential impacts on the economy and job market of short-term rentals and guide the village on its pending Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan and zoning code revision projects to make sure the village protects housing options ”for people who grow up here and want to live here, while also engaging our industrial leaders to make sure we are putting policies in place to encourage the creation of more skilled and professional jobs. We have major work ahead of us to protect and preserve the year round economy of Greenport, none of which we can accomplish without data that, if successful, Professor Durovich’s group will help us find and analyze.”

Greenport Village Trustee Mary Bess Phillips said the issue of the village’s historic homes, some, which were formerly two-family homes and have been purchased for use as single family homes and short-term rentals, should be brought into the discussion.

Trustee Jack Martilotta applauded the idea of asking the students to come. “I think it’s the greatest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

Hubbard said, after much discussion, the draft of the short-term rental legislation was out of the code committee and back at the village board; a public hearing on the new draft still needs to be held, but he said it might be prudent to hold off on that until the village had garnered the information the students might glean.

“We’re going nowhere with the short-term rental issue,” he said. “This can give us some information on where we want to go.”

Roberts asked if there was an immediate plan for the coming summer about the short-term rental issue. Hubbard said he’d considered asking owners of short-term rentals to register with the village, much like owners of year-round rentals must currently do, so that inspections might be done. Under the year-round rental registry legislation, seasonal rentals have previously been excluded, but airbnb type properties are all seasonal, he said.

The mayor suggested sending a letter asking owners of short-term rental properties to voluntarily register, so the village could work with them.

Roberts said the majority of complaints about short-term rentals seems focused on ”noise and partying,” with others expressing concerns about businesses operating in residential communities.

He said those quality of life concerns might be addressed through proactive code enforcement.

Phillips suggested the village consider a 24-hour hot line or online complaint process, similar to what was recently adopted by Southold Town.

“We can’t codify bad behavior,” Trustee Julia Robins said, adding that the bad behavior by short-term renters is the issue in many areas. She said the village cannot legally stop individuals from selling their second homes.

Hubbard said the bottom line is that the village needs to work to ensure not every rental in Greenport is an airbnb-style, short term rental in 10 years. The fear is that out-of-town developers might scoop up the available and rapidly dwindling rental stock, paying management companies to run the short-term rental businesses. “We have to have rentals so people can live here, or else in 10 years, it would be 80 percent short-term rentals and we’d be a Montauk resort. Our goal is to preserve what we have.”