Tap on the Brakes

East Hampton Town’s proposal to cut, by an average of 25 percent, the permitted maximum size of new house construction townwide has pointed a spotlight on the ironic paradox of this place.

Urged by the citizenry, the Town Board is seeking to rein in the tsunami of large houses being built here, which have increasingly distorted the rural look and feel of our community. At hearings almost two years ago, residents turned out to implore town leaders to do something. So much new construction is too big, they said. Our town is increasingly unrecognizable, they lamented.

What’s more, some said oversized houses are displacing the last remaining accessible housing out here (mostly in Springs and Montauk), driving out locals — and remaining empty for most of the year. Save our neighborhoods, people begged.

So, in May 2023, Town Board member Cate Rogers assembled a committee of town staffers and community members, the Zoning Code Amendment Working Group, and went to work.

She first successfully persuaded fellow board members to make 10,000 square feet the maximum possible house size in town on the largest lots, down from 20,000. (If you want one bigger than 10,000, you can still do that in Southampton Town.)

Now, Rogers and the committee have zeroed in on the politically tougher ask: They have called for smaller houses across the board, both to preserve the look and feel of neighborhoods and to preserve as much of the existing housing stock as possible.

The zoning code group is proposing to limit houses to 7 percent of a parcel’s lot area plus 1,300 square feet. That’s down from 10 percent and 1,600 square feet. That change would represent a 22 to 25 percent reduction in the gross floor area of houses on smaller lots (up to a half acre), and as much as a 29 percent reduction on larger lots, over an acre, until the 10,000-square-foot maximum kicks in.

In terms of actual square footage, the formula would still allow for at least a 3,000-square-foot house with a finished basement on a quarter acre. As has been shown at recent hearings, a house that size offers ample room for a four- or five-bedroom house with multiple bathrooms. On a half acre, houses with finished basements could be more than 4,000 square feet under the proposal.

Is that going too far? How much is enough? These are the questions facing the Town Board, and all of us.

There was an interesting and notable shift at the most recent public hearing on this issue. At the onset of this process, it appeared that the members of the Town Board would have to thread the needle between citizens, many of them local year-rounders, who favor tighter house size regulations and greater housing preservation measures, and the vast web of folks in the development and real estate world, whose businesses turn on construction and property, and who generally favor if not the status quo then the fewest limits possible.

But at a recent Town Board meeting — with members of the development world surely having done more of their lobbying behind the scenes — opposition to the proposed rules came from two young, year-round residents. They spoke emotionally but persuasively that the limits would hurt them, their ability to build out their homes to accommodate their families and hurt their chief investment.

They were backed up by an equally persuasive lifelong volunteer firefighter who pointed out that every ambulance and fire department out here needs volunteers, all of whom are by definition year-round-resident locals. The limits being proposed, he argued, would hurt local working people who are already struggling to make ends meet.

It was a compelling moment. The East Hampton Town Board is wise not to be seen as running against volunteer firefighters and young people fighting for a foothold here.

But the obvious question is: How does a communitywide reduction in house sizes hurt locals and drive them away? Is there any evidence that locals have moved, or are moving, away from here, or anywhere, because of zoning limits?

The irony is that a reasonable reduction — and 22 to 25 percent (on smaller lots) seems reasonable — is actually likely to help locals.

The fact is, we know exactly why people are leaving. There is ample evidence. People are leaving or are unable to remain here because we can’t afford to buy, to rent or to inherit, and many no longer recognize our financially out-of-reach and forever-changing neighborhoods and are choosing to sell and move away. The money from a sale is just too compelling. More cost-effective locales beckon.

Let’s be entirely clear: The mansion-ification of this place and the resulting soaring property values are what is driving local people and families away. The very business that in large part drives this place, that has been said to sustain its economy, that is making some people rich and others (grateful and) reliant on it for wages, is also what is sending housing prices through the roof, destroying affordability and livability.

In the small-lot neighborhoods where most year-round residents live, existing housing is being snatched up, expanded or razed, and replaced with much bigger houses, often then sold to someone who will use it for a few months a year, or as a seasonal rental business. Each project usually represents a house forever out of reach for someone who works and lives here.

And the East Hampton real estate hunting ground is only getting more valuable, more speculative, and bringing evermore social and community challenges. Which is precisely why it is in locals’ best interest to make that hunting ground less desirable.

This, of course, is seen by some as heresy. Therein lies the paradox: The very industry that is said to define this place is the source of many of its woes.

It’s worth noting that so much of what has happened here for the past 40 years has been in service of seasonal housing development. While the community was lulled into believing it was benefiting from all those billions of dollars in new construction, we should have been considering the many adverse impacts, and the need this massive development boom would create for affordable housing, traffic upgrades, sewer systems, the burying of power lines and more. Instead, we studied and stewed and largely stayed the course.

So, here, now, it’s time to tap on the brakes — not to take away what local people need to have an ample-sized and accommodating home, not to undermine ongoing long-term appreciation of our “nest eggs,” but simply to shake out the excess that has brought this town to a perilous tipping point and achieve some degree of rational re-balancing.

The proposal before East Hampton Town is the very minimum reduction to the maximums allowed to preserve what can be considered “local” neighborhoods. It reduces just a bit of the financial upside for developers and speculators, and extraordinarily wealthy people who want big homes, and encourages housing that is more in keeping with what is already here.

We all — and I mean all of us — lament the loss (or rather, nonexistence) of accessible housing and the soul-crushing transformation of our neighborhoods, and the blight on the beauty of this place. You hear it all the time.

But even as we despair at the problems that development is creating, we want the fewest possible obstacles — such as tougher zoning rules — in the way of maximum appreciation of our real estate projects or homes.

“You’re hurting my property values! You’re limiting what I can do on my property!” is what we’re hearing. But do the proposed changes really represent a significant sacrifice? Is giving up several hundred square feet off the top of an absolute maximum size that, for the most part, only developers will take advantage of really a deprivation?

The choice is clear. We can either preserve as much of what we have left or make as much money as possible.

We’ve tried to do both for years now. And, we know where that has led us.