This is a hard letter to write. It s about a my life, lived in a village that I love and how that village is changing and making feel less welcome.

My husband and I lived in our home, worked on it, improved it, made it comfortable and beautiful. There is a s a little apartment downstairs that we kept for our family when they visited and finally moved my 94-year-old father into until his death. He did not want a nursing home. He wanted to be with us.

Three and one-half years ago, my husband died suddenly. I was faced with many decisions, one of them being how I could afford to stay in my home. That little apartment and short term rental was the answer. I’m not young anymore. I wanted to stay in my home as long as I could and the thought of selling it in the future, if necessary, with an income producing property gave me a sense of peace. As did passing it on to my family.

Along came some governing members who decided they didn’t like the idea of short term rentals in Rockport even though there has been very little, if any, trouble around them.

They were determined to get their way, becoming less than transparent with how they achieved their aims. An ambition to win that just wasn’t right. Luckily there was a strong response to the regulation of these properties. The anti STR sympathizers retreated but then re-emerged insisting on bringing it to a vote.

What they want are property inspections, no transferral of short term rental possibility upon the sale of one’s house or even with inheritance.

Rockport has changed, allowing the town to fall into the hands of people who have a vision for it come hell or high water.

I’m not a corporation. I have lived and worked here for 50 years. No one I know who does STR is a corporation but instead a lawyer, a chef, a therapist, an artist. We have all been here a long time. We have raised our kids here. This gives those of us who rely on this income a sense of real insecurity about the future. It has made me for the first time to wonder if I even want to live here anymore.  It’s been a source of anxiety.

And what about the businesses in Rockport that benefit from us sending our renters to them? They have signed letters stating their support for us.

Rockport had a long tradition of seasonal rentals. It’s the coast of Maine! The very rich and the not so rich have existed peacefully throughout the years within this long tradition. So then I wonder who wants this regulation? Is this to become a town of the nouveau riche with sensibilities that come from somewhere else? Somewhere where property regulations intrude deeply into peoples’ lives? This place isn’t a mid-Atlantic state or a gated community in Maryland.

It’s not the Jersey shore.

Let’s not go there. Let’s have a town where many different kinds of decent people can live and flourish, as they have for years. The attempt to ban short term rentals is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

MarIka Kuzma Green lives in Rockport