Commodity, Not Community

Last week’s Express Sessions event in Southampton Village, part of a five-part series called “Local Matters” — upcoming events will turn to Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Hampton Bays and Westhampton Beach — was largely dominated by a trio of interconnected issues: traffic, most significantly, but also affordable housing and the need for septic solutions. As it turns out, the three are so intertwined that you simply can’t discuss them individually, and no “solution” will slay this three-headed dragon alone.

Still, there was a great deal to take away from this first conversation, and it impacts the entire South Fork, because Southampton Village is an epicenter of the traffic morass. The truth is, getting sewers in the village (and elsewhere) will allow for more affordable housing, which should begin to address the never-ending parade of vehicles, to some degree. Not the solution, but a solution.

Toward the end of the discussion, Jay Diesing of the Southampton Association used a phrase that sums up an underrated part of the problem: “We’ve become more of a commodity than a community.” This, in fact, is the entire point that East Hampton Town Board member Cate Rogers has been making with her recent deep dive into the impact of short-term rentals. What has happened as a result: Money is flowing into the local real estate market, which isn’t unusual, but this money is devoted to buying properties solely to peddle as Airbnb and Vrbo vacation getaways for days at a time.

It’s a complete conversion of the South Fork’s real estate economy. Sure, rentals have always been part of the region’s seasonal milieu. But those were monthly or seasonal rentals — a very different thing, with very different tenants — and the property owners tended to use that occasional income to be able to afford to live in those same properties much of the year. Community.

But now monied interests invest from afar and use websites to hand over the keys for very brief visits, at exorbitant rates. Commodity.

Rogers has highlighted this phenomenon in East Hampton, but it’s a regional problem — and finding workable limits is essential, because it’s burning through a good portion of the local housing stock that used to also allow for local workers to find options in between. Today, year-round rentals are a sucker’s bet for property owners, and the ensuing gold rush for properties has pushed young buyers out of the market altogether.

In the quest for answers to the biggest problems we face, this should get more attention from towns and villages throughout the East End. Get a handle on this, and you have gained ever so slightly on the monumental problems that seem impossible to fix. As the old saying goes: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. This would be a very big bite indeed.