To the Town of Roxbury Town Board:

We write as residents, homeowners, business owners, and employers of the Town of Roxbury. Some of us operate short-term rentals. Many of us do not. All of us share a deep and lasting stake in this town. We live here, we run businesses here, we employ our neighbors here, and we intend to be here for the long term.

We want to begin by setting aside a framing that has crept into this conversation. The proposed law, and some of the discussion around it, suggests a divide between “locals” and “out-of-towners,” as though short-term rentals are something done to Roxbury by outsiders. That picture is not accurate. The people who own, operate, and depend on short-term rentals in Roxbury are local by every meaningful measure. We are part of the present fabric of this town and central to its future. There is no us-and-them here. There is only Roxbury.

Roxbury has always been a place people come to stay

Hospitality is not new to Roxbury. It is part of who we have always been. The Dixon Manor was built more than a century ago as a rooming house, owned by people from outside the town and rented to visitors on a short-term basis. Welcoming guests, and earning a living by doing so, has been part of this town’s character for generations.

In the 1970s, Roxbury saw a wave of second-home development. For decades afterward, many of those homes sat empty nine months of the year. The arrival of short-term rental platforms changed that. It turned dormant houses into a source of year-round activity and year-round revenue, supporting local businesses through the shoulder seasons and broadening the base that funds the town’s services. Short-term rental did not disrupt Roxbury. It revived a part of it.

What short-term rental actually is in Roxbury today

It is important to be clear-eyed about the market this law would regulate. In Roxbury, short-term rentals are overwhelmingly second homes, operated by the owners themselves. For most, the rental income offsets the maintenance, the carrying costs, and the property taxes of owning a home here. It is part of what makes ownership possible for many families, and it is a meaningful contributor to the tax base that funds our schools, our roads, and our municipal services.

There is no investor class buying up Roxbury. The economics simply do not support one. Rental revenues in this part of Delaware County are modest, and the absentee, extraction-driven model that has drawn concern in larger markets does not pencil out here. It is not what is happening on the ground. A law written as if that were the reality here would regulate a problem the town does not have, and would fall instead on the residents and second-home owners who actually make up this community.

Where the proposed law goes wrong

We want to be fair. The draft contains sound and necessary safety provisions, and we support them. Our concern is with the provisions that have little to do with safety.

The draft clouds genuine safety regulation with housing policy. The one-year waiting period before a new owner may operate is not a safety measure. It is an attempt to steer the housing market, and as written it penalizes new owners while doing nothing to address the structural causes of the region’s housing shortage.

It also addresses safety unevenly. If the true concern is that homes used for lodging be safe, inspected, and compliant, that concern applies to all housing. Singling out short-term rentals, while leaving the rest of the town’s existing housing stock untouched, suggests the goal is something other than safety.

We have detailed these and other concerns, including the non-transferable permits, the local-presence requirements, the parking rules, and the open-ended fees, in the accompanying synopsis and alternative draft. We will not repeat all of it here. The pattern, though, is consistent: a reasonable safety core wrapped in provisions that reach well past safety.

What we believe will happen if this law passes as written

We do not raise these concerns in the abstract. We have watched more restrictive approaches play out in neighboring communities. In Shandaken, a heavier regulatory hand has been accompanied by precisely the concerns we raise here: downward pressure on real estate activity and on the local tax base, without any corresponding gain in affordable housing and without resolving the underlying structural problems. We do not want to import that outcome to Roxbury.

If this law is enacted as drafted, we believe the consequences for Roxbury would be serious and lasting:

• Real estate transactions would slow, as the income that makes ownership viable here is curtailed.

• Property values would soften, undermining the very tax base the town relies on.

• Town revenue would decline, even as the law delivers no offsetting benefit.

• Jobs would be lost. The cleaners, property managers, contractors, and others whose livelihoods are tied to short-term rental activity would see that work shrink, with no plan from the board for what replaces it.

• New business activity would have little reason to take root, with a smaller visitor base to support it.

• The town would expose itself to avoidable legal risk in how some of these provisions are applied.

None of this would create a single new unit of affordable housing. The structural causes of the housing shortage would remain exactly where they are. The town would have weakened what is currently holding up its economy and received nothing in return.

To be direct: there are genuinely good ideas in this draft, and some profoundly damaging ones. The good ideas are worth passing. The damaging ones are worth rethinking before they do harm that is difficult to undo.

A different vision for Roxbury

We are not asking the board to do nothing. We are asking it to aim higher.

Hospitality is one of Roxbury’s core industries. The path forward is to build on it, not to hollow it out. A healthy visitor economy and a growing tax base are exactly the tools a town uses to create new, homegrown, and sustainable opportunity. We have seen what that looks like here already. Projects like The Dixon hotel and restaurant and The Kirkside Inn will be employers and draws, and they will exist and thrive because people come to visit Roxbury and have places to stay. The next generation of such projects, supported by public-private partnerships and creative financing, can be employers too. They depend on the same thing: visitors who want to be here.

So we would ask the board to focus its energy on the question that actually matters. How do we attract more of everything this town needs? More visitors. More second-home owners. More investment. And more long-term, full-time residents. What is the plan to make Roxbury a place more people want to be, rather than to constrain what is currently sustaining it?

What we are asking for

Concretely, we ask the following:

1. Pass a clean short-term rental safety law, with clearly defined goals and practical requirements, that safeguards health and safety without undermining the existing economy of Roxbury or its future prospects. The accompanying alternative draft is offered for exactly that purpose, and we would welcome the chance to work with the board on it.

2. Recognize that the draft as written will not increase the supply of affordable housing, and was never structured to. Its likely effect is real economic harm to the town, falling hardest on long-time and underhoused residents who can least absorb it.

3. Tell us how you intend to encourage the creation of new housing units, and how the town plans to use state and federal programs - in partnership with private initiatives - to support the production of new, safe, and affordable housing.

4. Tell us what housing and community programs you intend to pursue to attract and retain new long-term residents.

We offer this letter, along with the accompanying alternative law and synopsis, in good faith and in a spirit of partnership. We share the board’s interest in a safe and thriving Roxbury. We are asking only that the law reflect that shared goal, and that it do nothing less productive.