Wading River vacation rentals have neighbors incensed, town investigating

Wading River residents upset by transient rentals in their beachfront community are demanding action by Riverhead Town, which has done little to enforce a ban on transient rentals put in place nearly three years ago.

The matter came to a head when the operator of a “beach house rentals” business with multiple listings in Wading River — offered for nightly, weekend and weekly rentals at rates of up to $1,950 per night — sought permission from the Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals to expand a converted garage that neighbors complain is already being used as a short-term rental.

Viriginia Grieco, who has an accessory apartment permit for the converted detached garage at 2 Oak Street in Wading River, denied at a ZBA hearing last Thursday that she’s renting out either the cottage or the main house to transients. Grieco testified that the main house is her primary residence and that she has an accessory apartment permit for the detached garage that’s been converted to a cottage.

“Is there a reason I can log onto the website and book that cottage?” asked ZBA attorney Scott DeSimone, referring to LuxuryBeachFrontGetaway.com, “And it was booked for most of July.”

Grieco and her lawyer, Salem Katsh of Orient, argued that the website and its offerings were irrelevant to the variance application before the ZBA.

“What is your question?” Grieco asked.

“You just — I think you just testified that it’s not being used for short-term overnight lodging,” DeSimone said.

“No, it’s not,” she answered.

“OK, so—” the ZBA attorney began.

“I don’t understand your question. You’re legally OK to advertise anything,” Grieco said.

Katsh elaborated, arguing that just because a property is advertised for rent doesn’t mean it’s actually being rented.

“I’m sure she doesn’t do anything illegal with the cottage,” Katsh said after a back-and-forth. “Is short term rental an issue here?

“Yes,” the ZBA members answered in unison.

“I can argue why her practices are grandfathered, why the statute’s illegal, why it’s a violation of the fair housing act,” Katsh said. “With respect, I think she has a very narrow petition. It’s apples and oranges. She shouldn’t be prejudiced because somebody made some noise about her rental situation. It has nothing to do with what she’s put before this board.”

The “noise” he referred to were complaints by neighboring residents about what they say is flagrant violation of the town’s ban on rentals of less than 30 days by Grieco as either owner or manager of numerous homes in the beachfront community.

The LuxuryBeachFrontGetaway.com website lists more than a dozen homes along the north shore.

Though the site doesn’t identify Grieco by her full name, it has a photo of her and another woman on an “about us” page that displays a first-person “welcome” narrative by “Virginia & Debbie. Owners and managers of these amazing properties.”

The message says the duo bought a little beach house in Wading River “about seven years ago” and decided to “rent it here and there on weekends.” Their neighbors, it says, “caught on” and asked for help renting their homes. “Now we’re up to about twenty-five homes and loving every minute of it,” the site says.

At an earlier meeting this month, ZBA members told complaining neighbors they needed to take up the short-term rental issue with the Town Board, which has control over the town code and its enforcement.

At the June 21 regular Town Board meeting, Dan Sakowitz and Jim Csorny asked board members to enforce the code.

Sakowitz told the board that since buying the house at 2 Oak Street, Grieco has turned “the property and many others nearby into a major business enterprise.”

Supervisor Sean Walter said enforcement efforts have been handcuffed by a shortage of lawyers in the town attorney’s office, especially since the resignation early this year of deputy town attorney Bill Duffy. The only way to stop violations of the town code is to bring an action in State Supreme Court, Walter explained. Summonses issued by code enforcement officers are returnable in Town Justice Court and can only result in the imposition of a fine. A state court injunctive action is more complex and takes more time.

The town has hired back former town attorney Dawn Thomas, who will focus on code enforcement cases, Walter said. She starts on Sept. 1.

In the meantime, the supervisor said, the town is “building a case” against Grieco.

Councilwoman Jodi Giglio had harsh words for people who maintain transient rentals.

“All of you out there that think you’re going to rent your houses on a weekend or weekly basis, the town will not tolerate it,” Giglio said from the dais. “We’re putting our foot down and we will not tolerate it. You will be stopped. Be warned. Don’t buy a house thinking you can rent it out for a weekend or a week.”

With a code amendment adopted in October 2013, Riverhead — which requires owners to obtain rental permits for all rented dwellings — defined “transient rental” as a “rental period of 29 days or less” and enacted an outright ban.

Since then, the town has brought one Supreme Court action, against the owner of a home in Aquebogue, town attorney Robert Kozakiewicz said in an interview last week. That case was brought in 2015, with the town hiring outside counsel to handle it.

The town has also issued some violations returnable in Town Justice Court, he said. Code enforcement officers went out to investigate some locations last summer, looking to develop a case, Kozakiewicz added.

Katsh acknowledged in an interview last week that his client rents houses on Creek Road.

“They are right on the Sound, one next to the other and the only reason these houses exist is to provide rentals,” he said. “No one lives in them. So the traditional arguments about noise, turnover, etc.— they just don’t apply to these houses. They’re purely rental houses.”

Katsh said there are hundreds of houses being rented for less than 30 days in Riverhead. “They have no ability to enforce the statute, so she’s going to be a guinea pig,” he said, referring to Grieco.

But the towns adopting these short-term rental laws are not getting “sophisticated legal advice” before they act, Katsh said.

He argues that the transient rental ban discriminates against families with children, a protected class under the federal Fair Housing Act.

“We know that families don’t take 30 days vacations as a family. They just don’t do it,” Katsh said.

In addition, Katsh says his client “is totally grandfathered.”

“She was renting in the exact place she’s renting now for years and years,” he said. “The law says that if you are engaged in a use prior to a new law that outlaws that use, you have the right to continue.

“It was totally legal. Everyone was doing it for years and years. Everyone’s still doing it.

“If you’re doing something forever and invested tens and tens of thousands of dollars into that business…They buy these properties and they make the investment only on the idea that they’ll make money off these properties for rentals,” he said.

“I don’t concur,” Kozakiewicz said. “Running a commercial rental business has never been allowed under the zoning there and their use was historically as single-family residences, not pre-existing short-term rentals.”