Southold Eyes Curtailing of Airbnbs, Short-Term Rentals

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A North Fork town is considering a dramatic step to reduce short-term rentals across its hamlets.

Southold Town is weighing a proposal that would limit permits for short-term rentals, such as Airbnb, to 1 percent of each hamlet’s housing stock, Newsday reported. Permit holders would be selected via lottery.

Fishers Island, which is only accessible by a ferry from Connecticut, would be excluded from the rule.

If the cap is implemented, only 119 homes would be eligible to host legal short-term rentals in town, according to a planning analysis. That represents an 80 percent reduction from what operates in the town’s rental market today.

“We are struggling to regulate it,” Southold town attorney Ben Johnson said of the short-term rental rules in existence, such as a ban on rentals of less than 14 days.

Restricting short-term rentals could significantly dent the income for the town’s resident hosts. A report from Rentalscape found the town’s hundreds of rentals brought in $27.5 million in income for hosts, boasting average nightly rates of $902.

“We cannot build a sustainable tourism economy on the backs of a workforce that can no longer afford to live here,” Economic Development Committee co-chair Amanda Giuliano told Newsday, calling the proposal a “step in the right direction.”

Southold has previously appeared poised to limit the number of short-term rental operators in town.

The town in 2018 adopted a proposal that violators of the short-term rental law could be fined up to $10,000, a penalty that could be increased if the lease rate for a shorter duration exceeds that threshold.

That was only for initial offenses. A second offense would draw a $20,000 fine and the revocation of short-term rental permits. Violators could even face up to 15 days in jail, a longer sentence than the length of a renter’s stay that may have sparked the violation in the first place.

— Holden Walter-Warner