Rental storm ‘Shelter’
Island neighbors vs. Airbnb landlords
Class warfare is raging on Shelter Island, LI, where backers of new rental rules tailored to repel beer-swilling riffraff are clashing with neighbors who say the “devastating” new regulations could send them to the poorhouse.
Middle-class islanders who rely on secondary income are balking at the law, passed in April, that says no home can be rented more than once in a 14-day period — intended to weed out hard-partying, short-term visitors.
“I’m paralyzed with anxiety about how to survive the winter,” said Julia Weisenberg, who uses her rental income to support her household, including three kids and a disabled husband.
Weisenberg is one of six homeowners who filed a lawsuit last week to repeal the vacation-rental law, arguing that any problems with short-term tenants have been exaggerated.
“What’s really going to ‘destroy’ this island for families is this law,” she said.
The new rules also require landlords to get a license, keep a registry of their guests and have tenants sign a “good neighbor” brochure.
Sisters Dawn and Madeline Fotopulos need to rent their elderly parents’ longtime summer home to support their medical care.
“Eliminating short-term rentals is a violation of property rights and discriminates against the middle class,” Dawn Fotopulos said.
Weisenberg, Fotopulos and other local landlords face staunch opposition from those who pushed for the law, arguing that inebriated “transients” who use Airbnb or HomeAway.com don’t fit with the island’s sedate vibe.
“It’s going to be another Montauk, and we don’t want that,” sniffed Joseph Kronwitt, who claims a rental house upended life on sleepy Sylvan Road.
“Throwing up in the street, peeing in people’s backyards, techno music at 3 o’clock in the morning,” he recalled. “It’s just disruptive to this way of life . . . It’s so quiet out here, you can hear your hair grow.”
His wife, Mary Jean, agreed.
“They’re not here to study their prayers,” she said of the visitors. “They’re here to party.”
And hold “raging keggers,” neighbor Chris DiOrio added.
“Every week or every other weekend there was a party going on there,” the neighbor griped.
Shelter Island — so quiet that there’s not a single traffic light — sees its population swell from about 2,000 to 10,000 in the summer. The town takes pride in being the “un-Hamptons,” free of nightlife-loving hordes.
Accessible only by ferry, the exclusive East End enclave has long been home to notables like violinist Itzhak Perlman, comedian Louis C.K. and actresses Uma Thurman and Julie Kavner.
Before the law was passed, town Councilman James Colligan e-mailed fellow board members an image of a “Beverly Hillbilly style truck” with the caption, “Mobile Short Term Rental.”
John Cosgrove, a Shelter Island landlord, said Colligan’s e-mail wrongly mocks those who offer such rentals. He said the vacationrental law “has the makings of a police state.”
Colligan said a year of debate went into the regulation and he denied he was making fun.
“There was no intent to mock those who rent out their homes,” he told The Post. “Many of these homeowners are my neighbors and I respect their rights.”