A group of West Oakland organizations is getting $800,000 to plant 1,500 trees in empty tree wells and front yards. But getting trees in the ground and keeping them alive has demanded intricate coordination among local stakeholders and is pushing local leaders to imagine new systems for community care of street trees.
The money comes from the California Air Resources Board and builds on an $8 million allocation for tree-planting citywide from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. The combined windfall presents an opportunity for local organizations to fundamentally change how the neighborhood’s built environment feels for the people who live and work there. Trees would bring shade to the formerly industrial area and help cool sidewalks, offsetting the heating effect of urban infrastructure and making the streets more walkable and bikeable.
The neighborhood abuts the Port of Oakland and three major freeways, and trees would remove some airborne pollutants like fine particulate matter and black carbon, making the air safer to breathe. Street trees can also bolster the mental health of residents and research has associated them with reduced neighborhood crime.
“It’s not every day that you see this kind of investment brought to this community. It’s exciting,” said Meet Panchal, the community engagement lead at the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, an environmental justice organization, who is conducting community outreach for the tree-planting program.
WOEIP is soliciting tree requests through an online form. Any renter, property owner or business owner in West Oakland may request a tree, and people who come to the neighborhood to work or pray may request one on behalf of their business or church. About 200 people have requested trees. The organization is taking requests through September.
Like many historically redlined communities, West Oakland has far fewer trees than wealthier, whiter neighborhoods nearby. In the 1930s and 1940s, a federal agency redlined communities of color like West Oakland by labeling them risky for investment, which led to systemic disinvestment in those areas. A city inventory of its trees for the Urban Forest Plan showed census tracts in the Oakland hills had significantly more trees than the flatlands. In some tracts in the hills, as much as 46% of land is covered by tree canopies. In the flatlands, which includes West Oakland, there are tracts with as low as 1.3% canopy cover.
“There’s a big divide there,” said Gordon Matassa, an acting tree supervisor and arboricultural inspector for the city.
Now a coalition of advocates, designers and city staff is rallying to try to chip away at that inequity.
Redlining and budget cuts drive inequitable tree cover
Tree maintenance in Oakland looks very different than it did three decades ago, said Tod Lawsen, an arboriculture inspector for West and North Oakland with 34 years of experience. City arborists used to handle regular maintenance and tree-planting. They planted about 10-15 trees per day and ran a watering program through the dry summer months, he said.
“Now we’re planting none. We even sold the water truck,” Lawsen said.
In 2008 during the Great Recession, the city laid off half the department’s staff and ended non-emergency tree work. In recent years the department has had just 25% to 50% of its pre-recession workforce, Lawsen said. When staff have moved on or retired, replacements haven’t been hired and the team has dwindled, he said. Meanwhile Oakland’s trees have suffered; many have died in the absence of care.
“Back when I was hired in 1991, crews did 90% tree pruning and 10% tree removal. That has completely flip-flopped,” Lawsen said. “We can’t keep up with tree removals, but through tree pruning we could have prevented quite a few.”
Unmaintained trees and poorly planted trees grow into power lines and block walkways and streets. Their roots can break the sidewalk. Fixing those problems gets expensive, he said.
Since Oakland slashed its tree department in 2008, low-income and working-class neighborhoods, which already had relatively little tree canopy, have sustained the biggest hit to tree health.
“Trees are going into decline faster in disadvantaged areas,” Lawsen said. “Tree care is expensive. In the affluent areas it’s happening, in the disadvantaged areas it’s not.”
Red tape stymies tree-planting
Fixing Oakland’s inequitable tree cover requires planting more trees, but under normal circumstances, filling an empty tree well by one’s house or business might be a lengthy, rule-bound slog.
“It’s not easy at all. There’s an enormous amount of regulation,” said Mandolin Kadera-Redmond, the executive director of the nonprofit Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation, which is handling tree requests. One would have to file for a permit and call their utility company. One’s tree well might not be up to code. A neighbor might object.
Tree-planting regulations got much stricter in the 1990s, so it is more complicated today to plant a tree than in the 1970s and 1980s, said Lawsen. The goal of the rules is to guide people to plant a tree suited to the site, where it will thrive without causing problems, he said.
Oakland keeps a list of 64 types of trees that can be planted in the public right of way, but those varieties often aren’t available at local hardware stores or plant nurseries that people can easily visit, Kadera-Redmond said. The city selects eligible varieties primarily for qualities like being low-maintenance and climate resilient, but people often want trees with other attributes like beauty, the ability to bear fruit or being native to the area, she said.
Moreover, a tree can cost up to $1,000, too large an expense for many, Panchal said.
The new tree-planting program streamlines that process for people who request trees, and Kadera-Redmond’s team is shepherding tree requests through the permit process.
Redlined neighborhoods’ infrastructure challenges greening
The built environment in formerly redlined neighborhoods can challenge tree-planting efforts. Some sidewalks lack tree wells, requiring excavation to plant a tree (something this grant doesn’t fund). And some sidewalks might be too narrow to accommodate trees and still be wheelchair-accessible, said Panchal. This program can’t green such blocks, which would need a more extensive redesign to accommodate trees.
Of existing tree wells in West Oakland, many are empty. By the city’s count, West Oakland had 529 empty tree wells as of 2020, Matassa said. But that is likely an inaccurate proxy for how many trees could be planted, said Panchal. Some of the wells in that count likely are not up to code, which would make them tree-ineligible. For instance, a well could be too close to a driveway or to utility lines. Panchal said he plans to verify that data by checking tree wells during community outreach.
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Matassa said that if a resident can’t use a tree well that isn’t up to code, they could still plant a tree in their front yard.
The project has enough funding to plant 1,500 trees, which Panchal said would likely be enough not only to meet demand for tree wells and yards, but also to plant some in other public spaces like the Mandela Parkway. But he said the program often can’t add trees to city properties since Oakland stopped routine tree maintenance and because of limited availability of irrigation infrastructure. Both local advocates and city arborists say routine care likely won’t be restored any time soon, though the city anticipates using Inflation Reduction Act funds to contract an arboriculture company to help maintain that program’s trees, Matassa said.
Residents saddled with tree care
That leaves almost all routine tree maintenance to private property owners, which can pose a barrier to greening historically redlined neighborhoods, said Brent Bucknum, the founder of Hyphae Design Labs, which has provided data analysis and design guidance to the project. He called making residents responsible for trees “problematic.”
In low-income and working-class neighborhoods, people might not want to take on the costs associated with caring for a tree, or they might not have time for an additional responsibility.
“That is really the linchpin for not establishing green infrastructure, we’ve found,” he added.
To address that concern, the program’s organizers are working to teach local volunteers how to care for street trees.
Tree maintenance primarily entails regular watering, especially over summer months when Oakland gets little to no rain. Trees also need occasional pruning. The most critical period is early on, Bucknum said. A tree planted properly in the right kind of soil that received regular water and pruning might live for 40 years, but that same tree planted in depleted soil and left unmaintained might live just 20 years, Bucknum said.
Right now, ad hoc tree care agreements have to be brokered every time a tree gets planted.
For instance, the program planted 16 street trees by Raimondi Park. The Ballers baseball team, a tenant, has agreed to take on the care. To help subsidize that effort, the Oakland Parks and Rec Foundation used the program’s grant funds to buy them a hose.
More often, trees are planted near homes or businesses, and local residents and business owners take on the maintenance. Wanda Stewart, executive director of the environmental education nonprofit Common Vision, instructs youth and adult community members about tree care at monthly garden work days that are also community parties. She plans to lead tree stewardship education events for people who receive trees.
Stewart strives also to motivate people to care for trees.
“We have to make it not just a tree giveaway but a tree adoption,” Stewart said. “It’s not just a free tree, it’s a relationship.”
Eventually, the program aims to shift away from ad hoc arrangements that depend on volunteer labor toward a more organized and financially sustainable model for tree stewardship. That might involve creating an endowment to pay for water for people who elect to maintain a tree. If people can’t or won’t care for a tree, a corps trained by Stewart at Common Vision could take over the maintenance and the stewardship endowment could compensate them. Such care schemes could apply not only to trees in the public right of way, but also those on people’s private property. The money could come from a grant or benefactor, or funds could be pooled from many local stakeholders like a business improvement district.
West Oakland’s empty tree wells likely all had trees in them at one point, Matassa said. Much of the time trees have died from neglect following the city cuts to tree planting and maintenance, Lawsen said. With the tree department underfunded and understaffed, community buy-in for tree care is essential, both arborists said.
“Trees survive the best when people care about them,” Matassa said.
Editor’s note 8/18/25: An earlier version of the story misstated the name of the California Air Resources Board.