San Jose’s tree canopy is disappearing.
The city is working to reverse the trend, but advocates say in order to meet its goals, more investments are needed in low-income neighborhoods where coverage is sparsest. San Jose has one of the thinnest tree canopies in the Bay Area, with about 13.2% of coverage across the city as of 2020. That’s down from 15.4% in 2012. A recent Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury report found that if the city plants 2,000 trees a year, it won’t reach its goal to have 20% of the city covered by 2051.
“I don’t think the city’s strategy is feasible, particularly for high poverty neighborhoods,” Jose Murillo, director of place-based neighborhoods for nonprofit Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment, told San José Spotlight. “I just don’t think that we will get significant tree canopy coverage in our neighborhoods such as Mayfair, unless we do something radically different. The city should be responsible for maintaining, pruning and planting trees in high poverty neighborhoods.”
Property owners are responsible for maintaining trees on their property and on the sidewalk next to their home. More than 90% of San Jose’s 1.6 million trees fall on the responsibility of homeowners to maintain, an unrealistic burden for some households, Murillo said…