Tamping Down on Share Houses
Eleanor J. Jacobus Smith passed away in 1995. Originally from Ridgewood, her husband Irving was an insurance executive, but for 23 years she operated the Holly Harbor House, a 12-bed boarding house in Sea Girt on Baltimore Blvd. A few years before she died, she had turned 112 Baltimore Blvd. over to Bill and Kim Walsh. They ran the last iteration of the house as a B&B. They charged Summer guests $50/night. The advertisements for the inn stated, “Stay once, you’ll return”.
After the 1993, season, the 12-room boarding house was put up for sale for $895,000. The house, founded as the Hollywood Manor in 1918 by Nusres A. Louise Klipstein and Rebecca S. Noble in the midst of the Spanish Flu epidemic and its grove of holly trees would come down for single-family homes.
Mrs. Smith, and the Walshes did not generally host groups of young people. Neither did the Ridgewood house on Terrace and First run by Mary Schambach nor the Beacon House, run by Candace Kadamik. The Blue House, First and Chicago Blvd., and the Parker House trended toward younger renters.
Mary Schambach rented mostly to extended families in the 1990s
While the hotels were gone and the rooming houses seemed under control, the residents of the Borough were still not happy with rental properties. Fox had a sitcom in 92-94 based in Belmar called “Down the Shore”, playing on the popular trend of “Share Houses”. Individual properties were quite expensive to rent for the summer, but a shared house allowed 10 or more friends in their 20s to rent a shore house. Many worked in the city and descended on the town for the weekends, with predictable occupancy and noise problems.
The cast of the Fox Show Down the Shore (Fox publicity photo)
In 1995, 108 homes in town were rented. Many of the rentals were to young adults. A limited number caused problems, but the problems were substantial. Council President Aherarn noted, “We would like make sure residents understand that there is no reason that someone should go through a summer of hell.”
The “Blue House”, once called the Parker House West, was one of the rooming houses young people enjoyed.
To control the problem, Sea Girt required rental occupancy certificates, strictly limited numbers in a house to a number of bedrooms, banned sleeping on porches, and increased most noise/disturbance complaint fines up to $1,000. They formed a Rental Review Committee. Police Captain Ed Sidley, Council members Ballou and Ahearn, and new Code Enforcement Officer Kevin Davenport, plus some local real estate agents and residents, served on the Committee.
The kids got the message as houses with parties and loud music were visited early and often by the SGPD. Word got to agents and renters that certain rentals were not welcome in Sea Girt. Most of the '‘undesirable’ rentals went to Manasquan or Belmar, who welcomed or at least tolerated the business.
It might be shocking today, but before the 1980s, driving drunk was a nuisance but not treated much differently than other traffic tickets. The lowering of the drinking age in the 1970s significantly increased deaths of people under 25, and was a major factor in returning the drinking age to 21.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving MADD was formed in California in the early 1980s. They received support from the Clinton Administration, sobriety checks became regular occurrences nationwide, and the stops were upheld in a Supreme Court challenge. The term “Designated Driver” was popularized.
Police Captain Sidley ran a program in Sea Girt in 1995 in cooperation with MADD, where they did a sobriety traffic stop in town, and handed out red ribbon stickers, asking drivers to display them in support of sober driving.
In 1995, Zero Tolerance was passed into Federal law, making it illegal for anyone under 21 to drive with any measurable amount of alcohol. The State increased fines and insurance rates for DUI convictions were significantly increased. The legal BAC limit in New Jersey was lowered from 0.15% to 0.10%, and enforcement was stepped up, with no tolerance for commercial drivers.
New York City introduced the first Taxi-Vans in 1995, and not long after, large passenger vans were shuttling people between bars. This helped alleviate drunk driving and parking limitations in places like the Parker House, Bar A, D’Jais, Leggets, and the Osprey.
Wally’s Vans and a host of other taxi-vans popped up in response to the efforts against drunk driving. (Wally’s llc)
In one 1995 instance credited with saving lives, a limosine driver on his way back to Matawan, carrying 14 CBA Prom students and their dates was pulled over on Washington Blvd. The driver was driving the extra long limo erratically. He was charged with DWI, and the students picked up by their parents.