A couple weeks ago, I laid out an argument for why Home in Tacoma Phase 2 is such a big deal. In short, it is rewriting the rules for most residential areas to make room for more homes and more trees. Exciting!

Tacoma Tree Foundation supports Home in Tacoma because it is in line with our core policy principles.

One of those is that trees and density create livability. We are motivated by the reality that our city and our region can house everyone who wants to live here by offering many types of affordable and attainable housing, and that this density can coexist with an abundance of trees and high-quality greenspaces. Working towards social change that fosters harmony between trees and density is part of how we at TTF promote and work towards healing in all its forms.

While the Home in Tacoma process has been going on for years, it is still catching some people by surprise. We can expect to hear a host of arguments in the coming weeks for why the City Council should scrap, delay, rearrange, or gut the whole package.

So here are a few of those arguments and why I think they are mistaken:

1

“Home in Tacoma is about housing, not trees. They should pass the new development codes but not the landscaping codes.”

This is the easy one. As I argued in my previous post, we know that for Tacoma to be more livable in the future, we need more trees and we need more homes. **If we continue allowing large buildings with no space for trees, we will be lowering the quality of life for folks who live there**. Trees on private property do not have any protections in Tacoma.

152 years without tree protections is why we have the lowest tree canopy of any urban area in Western Washington. Developers are currently allowed to clearcut residential lots without being required to replant trees, all while building out to the very edges of these properties. It’s time for that to change. Plus, the newly released Environmental Impact Statement for Home in Tacoma Phase 2 reinforces how important trees are for offsetting the negative impacts that can be expected from increased home construction.

2

“The City shouldn’t regulate private property. Owners should still be allowed to cut down trees without a penalty because the trees belong to them.”

No matter where they are planted, trees in a city are part of our essential public infrastructure. They cool off neighborhoods, suck up stormwater that would otherwise pollute the Sound, clean the air, and generally make it possible for us all to live in this place.

A city with no trees is a city where residents are even more vulnerable to heat stroke, asthma, and poor mental health, a city with no birds or wildlife. The City of Tacoma should regulate trees on private property because regardless of who “owns” them, we literally can’t live without them.

On top of that, the City already regulates private property in the form of construction permits that make sure our built environment is safe. If we can require a permit for building a deck in the interest of public health and safety, we can definitely require people to leave their healthy mature trees in the ground. Home in Tacoma Phase 2 will finally place a real value on the public benefits of many “private” trees. The biggest healthy trees will be illegal to cut down, and smaller ones will be removable with permission, for a price. This is progress that benefits everyone.

3

“The City shouldn’t require tree planting on private property because there is still a lot of room in the right-of-way.”

Three years of planting street trees has taught me that **the** **right-of-way** **is one of the hardest places to find space for trees.** Sometimes the planting area is too narrow. There can be gas lines below ground and power lines above. There can be pavement or compacted gravel that make the space unsuitable for planting.

And we see these challenges more in some neighborhoods than others. In addition, the City’s Urban Forest Management Plan shows that even if we filled every right-of-way space with trees, we still would not reach the City’s 30% tree canopy goal. Residential yards represent the single best opportunity area for having more trees to our landscape, so we need to make it harder to cut them down and easier to plant them. (Like, super easy.) That’s what the landscaping code in Home in Tacoma Phase 2 will help us to do.

4

“It is going to take a lot more people working in permitting and code enforcement to make sure new tree regulations are followed. If the City can’t enforce the code, they shouldn’t pass it.”

Enforcement of tree regulations is a big and important topic that cities have to deal with. Proactive regulation and enforcement can have a positive impact on the urban forest while a lack of enforcement can lead to more trees being cut down without penalty.

But in my opinion, the City’s job is to tell us the right thing to do: they can pass good regulations so that owners who want to do the right thing—designing residential construction projects that save mature trees and also plant new ones—will have a road map to follow. In Tacoma, there is no “illegal tree cutting” on private residential property because cutting down healthy trees is *somehow still legal*.

Home in Tacoma Phase 2 will create a better standard so that those who want to do the right thing for people and the environment can do it. After it passes, we can then continue to push for better enforcement. (The speed limit isn’t always enforced, but it is still important!)

In sum, Home in Tacoma Phase 2 is going to be controversial. We can expect to hear a host of arguments about why the City shouldn’t take this set of actions, not only from residents but also from developers and from the City Council members themselves.

This will be a hard political fight. But if the final product makes it easier to grow more homes and trees side-by-side, the benefits for our future will be massive.