Welcome to Brookline, my adopted hometown.

It’s a sanctuary city for ?illegal immigrants. It’s where Town Meeting OK’d non-citizens voting in local elections, put the kibosh on spanking and banned plastic bags and Styrofoam. We’re right-thinking and compassionate in Brookline — unless you live too close to Boston.

If you own a condo or home or rent an apartment that straddles the Brookline/Boston line — sorry, the Kumbayas are out the window. It’s get outta town and don’t try sending your kids to our schools.

Looking to tighten up residency rules in an overcrowded school system, the School Committee has sent letters to roughly 30 homeowners telling them no more Brookline schools for your kids. Just like that. And suddenly the little condo somebody just paid $500,000 for loses half its worth if this proposal ?passes. Our schools, after all, are what make Brookline expensive.

“We’re devastated. I don’t think I’ve really slept since I received that letter,” said Chris Dallas, who bought his home on the West Roxbury line barely a year ago.

“Imagine sinking all your life savings, everything you have, into a home,” said Liz Donovan, who moved to the Brookline/Brighton line this year. “And then somebody tells you, we’re taking $200,000 away from your home’s worth immediately.”

“Our home is our primary asset,” said Thea Singer, whose modest little Colonial straddles the West Roxbury border and who — like these other families — received written ?assurances from the town, before buying, that their home would always be a Brookline home. They pay Brookline taxes, after all. “We were going to be drawing on our home for retirement. Now, I don’t know. …”

You think Brookline, you think deep pockets. But the Donovan family is shoehorned into a tiny two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a three-family. “Honestly if we had to sell now, we couldn’t,” Donovan said. “We’re underwater after this (proposal).”

Singer, an editor and a writer (she’s done stories for the Herald, among other ?local papers), jokes she’s in the smallest house in town. “We’ve been here for 17 years,” she said. “How can they change now?”

Scott Gladstone, a Town Meeting member I spoke with, agreed that these families could be ruined ?financially. And Alan Morse, head of the School Committee, said no final decision has been made; they’re having another meeting tomorrow.

The letter from the School Committee says children in “straddling” homes who are already in the schools can stay, but kids too young, like the Donovans’ 2-year old, are out of luck.

Rebecca Stone, whose subcommittee proposed the change, objected when I called the letter a “bait and switch.”

“I have tremendous personal sympathy for the ?uncertainty” caused by this proposal, said Stone, who also pushed for non-?citizens to vote.

As for homeowners’ property values, Stone said, “Many policy changes can potentially change the value of a house. Zoning changes, environmental changes, another housing crisis.”

That’s what she said.

Welcome to Brookline, my adopted hometown.