by Don Le
Walking down to the local San Jose Edenvale Library on Monterey Road in sweltering ninety-degree heat with no shade for two miles, Scott Suksawati gulps some water and prepares himself for the sweaty, exhausting walk he has to endure in San Jose’s District 7.
“There’s just less trees, more [asphalt], more cement, more… turf. There’s less grass. You can’t compare it to South Side San Jose. It’s not as green.”
Suksawati lives in the area of San Ramon Way and Costa Mesa Drive located in San Jose’s District 7, one of San Jose’s worst districts in regards to urban canopy cover.
Urban canopy cover is defined as the area of land covered by trees, leaves and branches when viewed from above in an urban environment.
San Jose’s urban canopy cover has fallen from 15% in 2012 to 13% in 2018, far below the 20% canopy cover the Department of Transportation considers a realistic baseline for San Jose (Leahy 2017).
Districts 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 rank the lowest in the city’s 10 districts with canopy cover percentages ranging between 10-12%, according to the city of San Jose and U.S. Forest Service.
Districts 1, 6, 9, 10 rank the highest with canopy cover percentages ranging from 14-19%.
Rhonda Berry, CEO of Our City Forest, Silicon Valley’s leading urban forestry non-profit, cites urban development with high rates of asphalt and cement, poor tree maintenance by property owners, and underinvestment in the city’s arboriculture as the main contributing factors to the city’s loss of canopy cover.
“In San Jose, you do not have as many what we call “ready-to-plant” spaces. We have to create new spaces and we create those by breaking up cement or asphalt, doing soil remediation and creating new sites,” said Berry,
Berry says it’s two or three times more expensive to remove the cement than it is to install a tree.
“It’s a financial barrier… We get grants to pay for the trees and what have you but we can’t pay for all that cement cutting. And for some sites, it could be asphalt that needs to be broken up.”
The city of San Jose has an estimated total street tree population of 270,000 as of 2018-2019, according to the latest data provided by San Jose’s Department of Transportation.
Single family and multifamily residential lots in San Jose account for approximately 233,000 trees, or 86% of the street tree population, according to the city’s Department of Transportation.
The responsibility of private property owners to maintain the street trees adjacent to their property has been in the San Jose municipal code since 1951.
Yet, according to city documents, there is confusion on who exactly is responsible for street tree maintenance amongst new San Jose homeowners and renters.
“We definitely see that as one of the gaps within our program is just the fact that there is a large rental community in San Jose and responsibility is not clear in that case,” said Russell Hansen, San Jose’s city arborist. “Is it on the homeowner? Is it on the renter or otherwise? I think those are some of the challenges we have to work through as we move forward with our strategic plan and all the other work we’re doing related to this management plan.”
This poses a problem with tree health and accountability responsibility because of the city’s high population of renters, says Rhonda Berry.
“If a renter wants a tree, we can’t just give them a tree or plant the tree for them. We have to get the property owner’s permission and the property owner has to sign off on the tree application… But for a lot of people, this is a barrier,” said Berry. “It’s like it’s not my property, why should I bother? And then sometimes you can’t get a hold of the property owners. So that’s another barrier.”
City officials hope to address the declining urban canopy cover with the San Jose Community Forest Management Plan,a detailed 20-year plan that aims to build and sustain the city’s declining urban canopy cover.
On Feb. 8, the city’s Department of Transportation director John Ristow, Deputy Director Rick Scott, and city arborist Russell Hansen presented the 232-page document they compiled for over two years.
The key findings they found were that economically disadvantaged communities have fewer trees than higher income communities, additional funding and human resources are required to manage the community forest, immediate action must be taken to reverse the trend of declining canopy cover, current urban development practices limit the space for trees and the city’s arborists are spread thin as is.
The plan also highlighted the benefits of having trees in the city such as the reduction of the urban heat island effect, cleaner air, less CO2 emissions from vehicles, and improved mental health.
Residents in East San Jose believe there is more talking being done than actual actions.
Shannon Miles, a resident on Bambi Lane in San Jose’s District 5 neighborhood, says he and other neighbors send emails and attend Zoom meetings, yet see no change in tree canopy cover in their neighborhood.
“If you go to other neighborhoods like Los Gatos or Sunnyvale they have very great, mature trees along their neighborhoods but as you push eastward they become more and more scarce,” said Miles.
“We go back and forth with it as far as, you know, Zoom meetings and stuff like that. But it’s like how many Zoom meetings can one have? We talk about these issues round and round in circles including urban development.” Why is it that this part of San Jose, or to say District 5, has a lack of trees, resources and the money to do the things that other districts or even other cities have? Is it because the income level out here is low, or the property taxes are not sufficient?”
“A lot of the older people see the issues but they’re too scared to come out here to voice their opinions. You know. What is one to do? What do we do? What more can we do? We do write letters. We do show up at their meetings at City Hall. And you know, you’re given two minutes to talk.”
“What is it that we, as taxpayers, residents of District 5. What more can we do? Who else do we talk to if the powers that be are not listening?”
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