In mid-March, an East Hampton homeowner invited a 40-something friend to ride out the pandemic with her and her family out east. It was still early in the COVID-19 outbreak, and New Yorkers were drowning in fear and uncertainty; this seemed like the decent thing to do for a single friend. It was meant to be a temporary arrangement, they both agreed.
Five months later, it’s prime beach weather, Labor Day is on the horizon…and a departure date isn’t even being discussed.
“The agreement was that it would be until offices reopened,” said the homeowner, who asked to remain anonymous for fairly obvious reasons. “Now businesses are all remote, restaurants have not opened for inside dining, and it’s 100 degrees in New York City. There are so many guests still here…. The Hamptons offers a very cushy life and they don’t want to return to the city.”
Nightmare houseguests are a Hamptons staple and complaining about them behind their backs is basically a sport. But this summer, many are yearning for the old days, when a guest leaving a wet towel on the floor or eating the last serving of lobster salad was as bad as it got. Because while much of the New York City lockdown has now been lifted, a recent unscientific survey of New York–area hosts with pandemic-squatting friends suggested that a fair amount of houseguests are continuing to outstay their welcomes.
“Wouldn’t you think the person would say, ‘Is it okay I’m still here?’ But the silence is deafening,” said our East Hampton homeowner. “This could go on forever. She got scared, then barnacled onto our life. She regressed into a child in a big, bad world with disease and looters.”
It’s been well documented by now that New York’s most well-to-do neighborhoods saw an exodus throughout the pandemic, as those with second (or third or fourth) homes decamped to their more spacious climes. Less discussed is the fact that a fair portion of them, whether out of a sense of community or adventure, had hangers-on.
Another family with a summer house in East Hampton took in a single friend in her 50s, thinking the coronavirus chaos would be short-lived. “I called and said, ‘Come out and stay with me,’” said the hostess, who also preferred not to be named. “I didn’t think it would be just a week or two, but I thought it would be more like a month. By late spring, we started talking about her going back, but then the protests started. And she’s still with us.”
The hostess said it was fun at first, cooking and drinking together, and the houseguest always helped clean and do dishes. “We put a massive dent in the wine cellar,” she said. “She was a great family buffer during the first couple of months.”
But once summer hit, the walls on her “small” house started closing in. “It’s just a five-bedroom,” she said. “My husband got very frustrated. He told me, ‘It’s just too many people.’ We’re not used to living in such tight quarters.”
On July 4, the family started asking mutual friends if they could fob off their never-ending guest. “I asked, ‘Can somebody step up here? We need a break,’” she said. “Nobody stepped up. It certainly would be nice if somebody would take her at least through Labor Day.”
Sara Adams and David Hart, co-owners of the Sag Harbor, New York, restaurant K Pasa, were supposed to go skiing in France in March with four friends. Instead, all six of them (and all their ski gear) ended up hunkering down at the couple’s house in the Hamptons. The homeowners set some rules: In the main room, nobody could watch the news—cell phone consumption only, Adams recounted. “No dishes were to be left in the sink. Everyone was instructed to wash sheets once a week.” And then there was the big deal-breaker: “You can stay as long as you want, but if you leave, you can’t come back.”