Southampton rentals difficult to monitor, official says, prompting safety concerns
One day after a fire at an unpermitted vacation rental home in Noyack left two sisters from Maryland dead, the head of Town of Southampton code enforcement said Thursday he hopes the tragedy might serve as a cautionary tale.
"I think this tragic event really underscores the importance of following the process of legally renting and of making sure the proper safety inspections take place before renting," Southampton director of code compliance and emergency management administrator Ryan Murphy said, adding: "And maybe renters will ask questions about permits and safety inspections to make sure they're protected, too."
The probe into the fire's cause, and whether any code violations were connected to the blaze, is still incomplete, officials said. Valid renter's permits require a safety inspection either by the town or a private licensed service.
Southampton Town Police said Jillian and Lindsay Wiener, 21 and 19, died as a result of the fire that swept through the rental on Springs Lane early Wednesday. The two were members of a family of five from Potomac, Maryland, who friends said rented the house for a week using an online service. Officials have not verified the service used to rent the house.
Lewis Wiener, 60, wife Alisa, 52, and their son Zachary, 23, all escaped the burning home, police said.
Murphy said on average there are between 3,500 and 4,000 permitted rentals in the Town of Southampton, a popular vacation spot, and that, because of the wide-range in neighborhoods, these run the gamut. "You have cottages and apartments that rent for hundreds of dollars and you have nine-bedroom, 12-bathroom oceanfront villas that rent for hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said.
He said one hard-and-fast rule for rentals — whether a year-round residence or seasonal summer rental — is that the permit process requires a mandatory safety inspection and that all properties require a minimum 14-day stay.
Single-night and short-stay rentals are not permitted, he said.
Murphy said the town divides inspection areas into eight zones and code enforcement officers often scour the internet for unpermitted rentals, taking photos of homes into the field to locate illegal rental properties and issue violations. He said since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic the number of rentals has gone up, but that the enforcement process has resulted in a 92% compliance rate.
"The problem," he said, "is it's kind of a whack-a-mole game. We find one and two others pop up."
"Most of the time," Murphy said, "people don't realize they're violating the law. Sometimes they just don't know. Hopefully, out of this, more owners make it a point to go through the process legally."
A friend of the Wieners, Maura Kilner, said Thursday the issue of safely renting a vacation home came up during a gathering of neighbors outside the Wiener home Wednesday night in Potomac.
"I know whenever we go anywhere now, we're going to check," she said. "Where are the exits, where the smoke detectors are, is everything working … It makes you think."
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
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