On Aug. 1, Bill 89 will go into effect, dealing a deathblow to Oahu’s vibrant vacation rental businesses.

My wife and I are just two of the many Hawaii residents who will be hit in the pocketbook by this ill-conceived law, which effectively bans vacation rentals on Oahu outside resort areas.

Like many of our friends and neighbors, we have depended on a small vacation rental business as a source of income over the years, as we built a life together and prepared to grow old in our beautiful state.

I am a local boy. My grandfather came to Hawaii from the Philippines in the 1920s to work in the sugar mills and build a new life for his future children and grandchildren. His family was excited about the doors of economic opportunity that were opened by statehood when Hawaii officially became part of the American family.

With only a seventh-grade education, he went on to work at the Kahuku Sugar Mill. He worked hard, sacrificed and eventually saved up enough money to buy a large property on the North Shore and built a house in 1948, before building additional homes.

The property has been passed down through our family. My wife and I have maintained the homes and rented them out to both travelers and long-term tenants. Our homes were so popular with families looking for a cheaper alternative to the big, expensive hotels, and we were able to grow it into a business. Over the decades, the homes have become dilapidated and required work, but our income from renting helps us refurbish them.

We’ve paid our taxes and employed many people over the years to help us with upkeep. We like to think we are living our version of the American dream that my father and grandfather wanted for their family. But when Bill 89 goes into effect this week, it will be the end of that dream.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. To us, the image of a hotel owner and well-paid lobbyists for the hotel industry smirking behind the mayor and City Council members as they signed a law to shut down businesses like ours spoke volumes about their priorities.

It is our sincere hope that our elected officials listen more to local stakeholders like us and less to well-connected insiders who can fill their campaign coffers. Just because we cannot afford to hire powerful lobbyists doesn’t mean our concerns should be ignored.

We have always had a mix of short- and long-term rentals, with the long-term ones serving as affordable housing. With the new law in effect, we will have to switch more of our properties to long-term rentals and have raised the rent 20%. It saddens us that we can no longer maintain these as affordable homes, and that they will no longer be available to travelers.

For us, it was always about more than the money. It was about the people we met and the memories we helped make possible so visitors could afford their vacation. We still stay in touch with some of our guests, and many have come back to stay with us again.

Justin Javier, of Haleiwa, runs family-owned rental properties.