Court hearing set for crowded house used by Hampton Country Day Camp
This house, at 17 Ocean Blvd. in East Hampton, has been cited by the town with 61 alleged code violations. This was the house on Aug. 6, 2015. Credit: Doug Kuntz
A hearing on more than 60 code violations issued at what officials called an overcrowded single-family house in East Hampton is scheduled for Monday in town justice court.
One of the main shareholders in the company that owns the property, Glen Cove-based HCDC Holdings LLC, is Nassau County Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs. He has said the house at 17 Ocean Blvd. is used to provide free housing for counselors who work at the HCDC-owned Hampton Country Day Camp and that most of the charges issued Aug. 5 are unfounded or exaggerated.
Jacobs said he had "about 10" of the occupants removed from the house during the Aug. 8 weekend and moved to other Hamptons properties owned by HCDC after a state Supreme Court judge in Riverhead on Aug. 6 issued a temporary restraining order requiring a portion of the house be closed off.
The 61 violations include overcrowding, missing smoke alarms, change of use or type of occupancy, use of a single-family home as a dormitory and failure to keep clean and sanitary conditions.
Jacobs, who said in an interview last week that he did not personally plan to be in court Monday, said, "We took people out of three bedrooms, and we're getting an engineer or an architect to define by the state building code how many bedrooms can be in that house.
"In the interim, so as not to aggravate the situation, we have removed people from those rooms until it is determined how they can be used," Jacobs said.
Jacobs said he purchased the structure as a seven-bedroom house for $500,000 in a foreclosure four years ago and that it is zoned for camp use. He said the house is "beautiful" and that camp counselors love living there.
But Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said of the house after it was investigated that most of it "had been altered without the required building permits or inspections, making for a dangerous living situation. The house had eight bedrooms, twice the number it was legally permitted to have."
