1 MAN, 1 HOUSE, 40 RESIDENTS, A $20,000 FINE

By Dan Rattiner

It has never been our local town government’s intention to interfere with the privacy of a man’s home. A man’s home is his castle, after all. But there are castles and there are castles.

Two years ago, a man bought a home in East Quogue and rented shares in it to thirty different people. Mattresses lined the floors. People partied day and night. The neighbors would find people asleep in the bushes. That wasn’t the kind of castle anybody had in mind.

The police raided that place and shut it down, following it up with summonses to the owners about renting the house out to so many people. A court case then happened and the homeowner lost and paid the fine. But then the homeowner sued on the grounds that he was being singled out because he was Jewish. This was a violation of his civil rights. In August of this year, that suit, after wending its way through the courts, was thrown out by an appeals judge.

Now the Town of Southampton has gone even further. The two owners of 1616 Millstone Road in Noyac had their home shut down in June, with fines adding up with interest every day to amounts in the tens of thousands. This past Monday, Michael Polacco and Paul Fried pleaded guilty to illegally renting out their house and agreed to settle the matter for $20,000, with the town earmarking $17,000 of that money to the identification, pursuit and ticketing of any other group houses that are in the community. Keep in mind that the laws specifically say that you are not allowed to rent your house to more than a certain number of unrelated people at any one time. And that number differs depending upon which town you are in. Basically, the enforcement only comes in if people are making a lot of noise, getting drunk and leaving a mess. Like those driving over the speed limit in a 55 mile an hour zone, it kind of depends upon how far over you go. Nobody’s out to give summonses to people who rent their homes for the summer to a few unrelated individuals who behave themselves.

The circumstances in this case might best be described as over-the-top. In Uniondale, Long Island, there was a graduation at Kellenberg Memorial High School this past May at which it was decided that a house in the Hamptons would be secured by the graduating class for the month of June. Man, would that be a party. Forty-six of the graduating students ponied up about $450 each and put their money down on 1616 Millstone Road in Southampton. There would be the graduation, there would be the prom, and then there would be the after-prom. The after-prom would go on for three weeks, which is almost forever when you are 17 years old. The place would get wrecked, of course, but hey, this was a once in a lifetime experience.

Forty-six people times $450 each equals about $20,000. There’s a healthy hunk of change to be made by renting your house out under these circumstances.

In this case, however, school officials stumbled upon the plan before the prom, notified the Southampton Town Police, and that was the end of it. Bummer. And in the end, the $20,000 got turned over to the town for further surveillance and enforcement. It’s not in anybody’s interest to see a group of houses in the Hamptons trashed.

At the present time, the Town Fathers are looking into a more upscale way of creating a summer party house in the Hamptons. In recent years, various companies that appeal to kids — MTV, Playstation 2 and Stereo nightclub — have rented homes on rural streets in the Hamptons and then have made them into party houses – complete with caterers, servants, volleyball events, dancing and so forth and so on. The houses, which are usually secluded or along the beach somewhere, are not rented to “a group of unrelated individuals,” but to a single corporation. Nobody actually lives in the houses, except for a few invited guests and the help, but they are surely party central on weekends for clients and friends and the businesses get quite a bit of good press from them, sometimes even model shoots and TV shows.

In out of the way areas, these party houses would pass scrutiny. In residential areas, though, they do not. And a judge may determine they are illegal by conducting business in a residential area. So the towns are looking into this. And the jury is still out.

The real challenge, therefore, is to keep the noise low, activities controlled, the cars parked neatly in a row by the valet car parkers, the security people maintaining control, the managers keeping things within the bounds of decency and the place shut down early every evening. It’s a tall order. And it bears watching.

But hey, summer is summer and if you can’t have fun then, when can you?