3500 Trees Project

Bureau of Urban Forestry Inflation Reduction Act Tree Planting and Workforce Development Grant

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Description

The San Francisco Public Works Bureau of Urban Forestry is partnering with nonprofit organizations and local businesses to plant and maintain 3,500 new street trees in low-canopy neighborhoods impacted by extreme heat due to climate change, including  Bayview-Hunters Point, the Tenderloin, Civic Center and Mission neighborhoods.

This important initiative is made possible by a $12 million federal grant awarded to San Francisco Public Works under the historic Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The aim is to combat extreme heat and climate change, plant and maintain trees, create green jobs and establish climate-resilient neighborhoods.

During the five-year grant, titled “Justice, Jobs and Trees: A San Francisco Climate Solution,” Public Works will recruit, hire and train 30 workforce development participants with the goal of preparing them for permanent positions with the City as well as in the private and nonprofit sectors. Public Works will also hire seven full-time professionals to help administer the grant. The grant allows us to plant more street trees than we have in decades by providing a significant investment in urban forest expansion.

The scope of work includes surveying potential tree planting sites, preparing new tree basins, conducting community outreach, planting and watering the 3,500 new trees during their three-year establishment period. They will be added to Public Works’ tree maintenance portfolio.

PRESS RELEASE: San Francisco Awarded $12 Million Federal Grant to Plant Thousands of New Street Trees to Fight Climate Change and Provide Green Jobs

History

In the summer of 2023, the Bureau of Urban Forestry, with the support of City Hall and numerous community organizations, applied for the historic United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service Inflation Reduction Act grant. Later that year, aftera highly competitive review process, San Francisco Public Works received the largest grant of any applicant in the State of California, $12 million, enabling the City to plant an additional 3,500 trees in San Francisco’s low-canopy disadvantaged census tracts. The grant specifically aims to counter the negative impacts of global warming, i by reducing carbon and providing cooling shade. The initiative also provides much-needed economic investment by  by creating green jobs in impacted neighborhoods.

Milestones

• June 2023 : Grant application submitted 
• September 2023: Grant awarded 
• November 2023:  Public Works Street Tree Nursery, which will serve as the hub for grant-funded tree planting activity, opens with a ribbon cutting celebration
• September 2024: Board of Supervisors votes to accept award and authorize expenditure of grant funds
• Fall-winter 2024 and spring 2025 - Outreach and planting begin

Launch

Our urban forestry inspectors have begun identifying suitable tree basins in grant areas and we anticipate first plantings to begin in late 2024, early 2025. We will engage community members in the planting process through community events and public service announcements and with support from nonprofit organizations in the Bayview-Hunters Point, Civic Center, South of Market, Mission and Tenderloin neighborhoods.

The grant comes as Public Works is activating its new Street Tree Nursery located in the South of Market neighborhood on underutilized Caltrans land near Fifth and Bryant streets. Opened in November 2023, the nursery will serve as a hub for the planting initiatives and workforce training.

Reducing Inequalities, Finding Solutions to Extreme Heat and Growing a More Robust Tree Canopy

San Francisco trails many large U.S. cities with one of the smallest urban tree canopies, with just 13.7% of the ground when viewed from above sheltered by the leaves and branches of trees. The national average is 27.1%. San Francisco’s tree canopy is also inequitably distributed among the City’s neighborhoods, with underserved census tracts having only about half the canopy at 8%, when compared with the 15% canopy coverage in other census tracts.  

• Canopy coverage in IRA-grant-supported districts lags wealthier neighborhoods in San Francisco. For instance, South of Market and Civic Center’s street tree canopy is 4.1%, the Bayview’s is 6.7% and the Mission’s is 7.5%. By contrast, Pacific Heights has 13.9%, Noe Valley has 15.5%, and Diamond Heights has 28.9%.
• San Francisco’s disadvantaged communities are also almost twice as vulnerable to extreme heat and contain half as much tree canopy as non-disadvantaged communities.
• Communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and several U.S. Territories and Tribal Nations are receiving funding, covered by the Justice40 Initiative and made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.  

While Public Works runs the StreetTreeSF program approved with overwhelming voter support in 2016 that sets aside $19 million annually for maintenance of the City’s 125,000-plus street trees, that local funding source is earmarked for tree maintenance, not planting trees.  Our 2014 Urban Forest Plan established the groundwork for StreetTreeSF’s mission and offers a vision and strategy to ensure an expanded, healthy and thriving urban forest now and for the future

Despite the success of the long-term tree maintenance StreetTreeSF program, which has been heralded as a model for urban forestry management in the United States, San Francisco has struggled to secure sustainable funding for tree planting, leaving thousands of potential tree-planting sites unused. Our Planting Strategy calls for planting 30,000 new street trees by 2040. This grant will accelerate our stride toward achieving that goal.
 

“Planting trees is one of the best tools we have to fight climate change and protect residents from extreme heat, yet too many of our urban areas lack sufficient tree canopies,” said the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, in announcing the grant recipients. “This grant funding will help more cities and towns plant and maintain trees, which in turn will filter out pollution, reduce energy consumption, lower temperatures and provide more Californians access to green spaces in their communities.”

• More information about the funded proposals, as well as announcements about the grant program, is available on the Urban and Community Forestry Program webpage.  
• Check out our online Street Tree Map, a database and map of San Francisco’s street trees. Here, you can look up information about trees, such as their location, species, and more.