Airbnb Backlash: Island Oasis Dreads Becoming Hamptons Hotbed

This is quite sad. We are living in times of considerable stress between worrying about children's education, making ends meet, terrorists, invasion, political flap, measles and the big one--climate change. Your home is your refuge from all this, a place of quiet and security where you can slop around in your old jammies and listen to old Cesaria Evora CDs. It is a pity that you feel you must lose that private tranquillity for money. What next? Sell your teeth?

They don't have much to worry about. Between the arrogant residents, the jellyfish and the ticks few people will book a second trip.

You want short term renters buy a motel. If you cannot afford your house without having renters you cannot afford a house. We’re finally getting some peace here in Naples, Florida, snowbird season is ending. There’s nothing like going to Costco where the living almost dead seem to think the free sample carts are there to provide them lunch. Being stuck behind a Porsche and a Maserati pacing each other 20 mph below the speed limit is always a joy too.

Airbnbs have become a scourge in Austin. When its first started up here around 2010, I didn't think much of it but now its a gentrifying nuisance.

First Walmart, then Uber and now AirBnB. It's all a "race to the bottom." The lowest price, no matter what.

Forbid all rentals for less than a week, and work hard to enforce it. Beef up the police force and clamp down hard on noisy parties, trespassers, etc. Stake out bars and stop many people leaving them to check on alcohol in their blood. One season of this should deal a mortal blow to the problem. Repeat for the next season. Who thinks that a house owner has the right to ruin a town in order to make a few bucks by renting it out to jerks?

Shelter Island is a special place. Short term rentals should be controlled. Airbnb turns every place into Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break.

Isn't this why we have zoning laws? If it walks like a hotel and talks like a hotel, it's a hotel. Airbnb et al are hotels. They don't belong in residential zones.

95% of the East Coast beach towns have become overdeveloped - that's the main reason people love places like Shelter Island. Don't let people cash in, only to turn it into the Hamptons, or worse, the Jersey Shore.

The restrictions seems sensible. Please, don’t forget that the South side of the shelter island ferry is in Sag Harbour and a few miles drive from the heart of East Hampton. Sag harbor went from a sleepy village to an extremely exclusive enclave for the like of Steven Spielberg and his friends. Despite all that, Shelter Island has remained mostly unchanged and preserved. It seems to me that the new regulations will permit the old families from Shelter Island to stay in their homes and not be priced out, or tempted by huge profit potential if they sell to the Billionaires likely circling and waiting to get their piece of the island. Shelter island represents a huge temptation for those with unlimited funds to dream of private docks and mega yacht parked at their private states on Shelter Island.

Nearby, Southold enacted a 2 week rental minimum a few years ago. Most folks looking for a nice family vacation cannot spend the time and/or money to rent for 2 weeks. I understand both sides of this debate. Its clear that no regulation can lead to a neighborhood's downfall, but implementing an overly onerous law like 2 weeks is overkill. Visitors have been renting cottages and homes in the North Fork for over 100 years, well before airbnb commodified the process. A 1 week minimum would have completely eliminated the weekender traffic and mostly limited rentals to the peak summer season, perhaps occasional holiday week or two per year. We receive several inquiries every year from families looking to spend a week in our area but have to turn them away. Can families with kids stay at BNB's or hotels? In addition to a one week minimum, you can also cap number of weeks rented per year via permits, tax reporting, etc. Theres some reasonable middle ground here.

Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's not going back in. Just ask Hampton Bays and Montauk. Without any real large night clubs on the island, house parties will become ever more present at STRs. Not sure the small police force could handle it. Unchecked Airbnb on Shelter Island will do irreparable harm to the soul of this small island.

I can see why having careless and loud short-term renters next door would be maddening--and absentee/investor landlords certainly compound the problem. But let's keep in mind that owning property near or right on the beach is a privilege that most cannot afford (a privilege subsidized by local, state, and federal governments, because, among other things, beach erosion is a constant problem--in nature, sandy beaches prefer to wander, not stay put). Short-term rentals make the experience possible for more people.

Ah, Shelter Island. Nestled between Long Island's two forks or fish tales, is a far cry from the over bloated Hamptons. Reason #1 - the Ferry ride which stops at midnight. Reason #2 - a dedicated and extremely vigilant town police whose pursuit of DUI drivers is relentless and a real reason people do not 'party' excessively on the island. Reason #3 - it is still a small community with limited things to do. There are restaurants and some hotels who have a bar for nightlife. No movie theaters, fast food. A library and two beaches and a town 9 hole golf course for visitors. Not many stores either for shopping on a rainy afternoon. Best of all on Shelter Island, the residents take their local government very seriously playing out in letters sent to the SI Reporter and at town halls. It might get messy but in my 20 year experience it always get resolved by majority and people return to being good neighbors for the most part. The Island will survive this storm too.

shelter island is not for everyone, and the LAST thing it needs is "new life" breathed into it. can't the greedheads leave anything alone? no.

If some home owners on the island cannot afford to live there without renting out rooms, perhaps they should consider selling and moving to a community they can afford.

As a resident of a small tourist town with a proliferating excess of short term rentals, these businesses have outright ruined our community. This intensifies gentrification, introduces skyrocketing rents and has effectively forced out all the interesting people, the artists, the raconteurs and the elderly. It's positively a Boon to the load mini Donald Trumps scamming the scene with their generic tourist traps leaving us surrounded with endless parties, greedy Capitalists and overpriced restaurants.

And something else that will happen to your community if you allow these short term rentals is the gradual decline of the quality of the housing stock. The tax treatment of rental property is much different than that of your primary residence. Depreciation allowances, deductions for rental related expenses and other tax code goodies will motivate landlords to defer maintenance and upkeep. The last thing you want to see is a proliferation of those electronic keypads.

When the incentive of financial gain replaces respect for residential community values of continuity, consistency, familiarity and shared interests, something valuable and irreplaceable is lost. Towns should have the right to regulate, and even benefit from seasonal and short term rentals as a way to balance and share costs and benefits, and avoid the harm that greed and exploitation inevitably cause.

Word of advice to the town council: airbnb is already sending in stealth teams of two to three who are meeting with landlords to strategize how to fight your ordinances restricting short term rentals. They will,with a straight face, argue that the laws you are trying to enforce will limit the housing stock for locals and apparently you already are aware, argue that it's the folks with money who are behind the restrictions. Don't give in. This company needs to cooperate with local officials. You are absolutely correct that short term rentals will ruin your town. Finally, for those who are trying to make ends meet by renting out their homes, figure out how to make do without ruining your neighbors enjoyment of their home. Where I live, we fought back and you can too.

Good for you, Shelter Island! Keep up the fight! It does indeed feel like an oasis when crossing this place. Keep it that way.

There are nice, quiet attractive areas like Shelter Island all over the country. Those who live in such places usually bought their homes not expecting to be impacted by the crowds, bad behavior and noise brought in by those who seek short-term rentals. I don’t mean to condemn all short-term renters; surely some, perhaps many, are well-behaved. However, I have homes in two communities where short-term renters, abetted by AirBnB and loose or absent zoning regulations, have turned little bits of paradise into little bits of chaos and unpleasantness: endless partying, loud noise, cars parked on the street and on neighbors’ lawns, people coming and going at all hours, occupancy levels not approved by local building codes—hardly good and welcome neighbors. It takes only one or two such bad renters to depress property values on an entire block. I know people from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, and I don’t know anyone who would willingly live next-door to a short-term rental in any community—except possibly other short-term renters.

AirBnB should never have been allowed, anywhere. If you want to open a hotel or run an inn or true B&B, then by all means, seek the necessary approvals and abide by all the rules that exist for very good reason. Enough time has passed for everyone to see the (if I'm being generous) unintended consequences of unregulated short-term rentals. If it's outside investors that are now the big offenders, well, that's what you might expect. But I have equal scorn for individual property owners who want to make a little extra money and don't mind ruining their neighbor's quality of life by "hosting" transient strangers as "guests."

Shelter Island is a very special place. I used to bike there several times a week -- taking the ferry -- and loved the quiet and beauty. I was renting a house in Southampton. That's how to enjoy the island.

Airbnb turns residential neighborhoods into commercial districts. Period. We cannot anticipate everything; but I, for one, would not purchase a house next to a motel, a gas station, a playground, a school, a public parking lot, and so on. Why? Because in all of them is the potential for noise -- everything from shouting to loud radios -- and expansion up or across. And worse. Airbnb -- as I know from my neighbors' "guests" -- has the potential to turn my relatively quiet backyard into an uninhabitable area due to noise and my neighbors' backyard into a pissoir due to not enough bathrooms to accommodate their too many renters.

Keep the camel's nose out of the tent, Shelter Island. When STRs first came to our town, they were pitched as perfect ways for residents to make side money renting to tourists coming here for the music. A few years later, a vast number of our STRs are owned by investors who may not even live in the state, and those music tourists have given way to bachelor and bachelorette parties nonstop, and huge multi-unit STRs -- essentially unmanaged hotels in the middle of residential neighborhoods -- are going up everywhere. Now, as one ESPN anchor covering the NFL draft hosted here pointed out, "It's no longer Music City, It's PARTY CITY."