Trees? Not in My Backyard.

“It’s almost like the government’s imposing its will on its residents,” Trayon White, the D.C. council member for Ward 8, said at the council’s June 6 legislative meeting. He wasn’t talking about a proposed highway, a subway station, a power plant, or—perish the thought—an apartment building. He was talking about trees: specifically, three linden trees on Xenia Street planted a few years ago by D.C.’s Urban Forestry Division. To my surprise, the legislative body of a major American city experiencing escalating homelessness and a serious spike in violent crime dedicated a quarter of its time that day to discussing three trees.

White said he was concerned about the potential risk to property values and what he sees as a “reasonable fear” that once mature, the trees would “be large enough to make it difficult to see through and around the walkway, which is a public-safety concern.” He asked his colleagues to support an emergency resolution to remove them before this happened.  

For a while, the members carried on as though this were a perfectly normal matter for their attention. A few suggested that perhaps expanding the tree canopy was good, actually. But no one really questioned the underlying premise of White’s proposal: that the community had risen up in dendrophobic opposition.

[From the July/August 2021 issue: A better way to look at trees]

“We want to note that these are homeowners who are worried about the value of their homes,” White said. “I just believe