You might be responsible for a Seattle street tree and not know it (White Center: house)

[homesinseattle]

Article link here: https://crosscut.com/environment/202...nd-not-know-it

“When Barbara Clabots bought a house in West Seattle five years ago, she was prepared for the responsibilities of homeownership — except for one unanticipated duty.
Her home, nestled on a street corner in Highland Park, north of White Center, came with an unexpected next-door neighbor: a 3,000-square-foot vacant lot between her property and the road, overrun with blackberry bushes and 15 malpruned, mostly dead trees. Clabots, an independent consultant, watched as the vegetation loomed over her fence and weighed it down, and as strangers dumped everything from construction debris to tires on the lot.

Clabots called the Seattle Department of Transportation about the lot right after moving in in August 2018, expecting the city would handle it: The lot was an unimproved right of way, or land designated as a street or path but never paved over. But she was told the trees were her financial and legal responsibility.
“I was like, ‘Well, **** … I guess I’m cleaning it up,” Clabots remembers thinking about the lot at the time. “But I was left in this puzzle of, what are my resources?”
While trees on Seattle streets and in rights of way are technically on public access property, they are almost always the legal responsibility of adjacent property owners. The city’s Department of Transportation regulates the right of way, but it manages only the trees it is documented as having planted, leaving homeowners to figure out the bulk of tree care.

Many homeowners aren’t aware of this obligation, or aren’t ready to provide this care. But failure to support these trees will have an increasingly dire impact on the city’s tree-canopy goals and on the planet. Trees cover 28.1% of Seattle’s 53,428 acres, with private property owners responsible for the majority of them. About 47% of tree canopy is in single-family neighborhoods. Right of ways, which are publicly accessible, make up about 23% of Seattle’s tree canopy, but private property owners are on the hook to care for most of these trees as well. Altogether, about 80% of street trees are the legal responsibility of nearby homeowners.
In 2007, the city committed to reaching 30% tree canopy coverage by 2037. However, Seattle’s most recent tree-canopy assessment showed the city is losing canopy in both rights of way and neighborhood residential areas more quickly than it’s adding to it. The biggest canopy losses affect historically marginalized communities in already tree-sparse neighborhoods stressed by the heat island effect, a phenomenon where local temperatures rise in the absence of trees and the presence of concrete and asphalt.
With private property owners responsible for maintaining street trees, improving both their awareness of these trees and their capacity to effectively care for them could make or break the city’s forested future”.