AI Summary
5 min readIn 2021, Sarah Bond finally bought a house in southwest Portland with her husband Joel. The house had a huge yard, perfect for their daughter Jojo to raise ducks and chickens. But soon after moving in, Sarah noticed a problem: a hundred-foot-tall Douglas fir growing at a dangerous lean toward the house. She could not even see the top of it from the backyard. She pictured it falling and destroying not just the roof but the family inside. When she and Joel applied for a city permit to remove it, an inspector came, deemed the tree healthy, and denied the request. The city said removing it would “significantly affect neighborhood character.” Sarah was stunned. “This is not a city tree,” she recalls thinking. “This is our tree in our own backyard. I don't understand how we are the owners of the tree if we have no power over making a decision about it.”
The rise of tree protection laws
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:23) **Sarah Bond's Dream Home and a Dangerous Tree** - Sarah and Joel Bond finally buy a house in Portland, but soon discover a massive, leaning Douglas fir in their backyard that threatens their home.
- 2 (02:59) **City Denies Permit to Cut Down Dangerous Tree** - Portland's inspector rules the tree is healthy and its removal would harm "neighborhood character," leaving the Bonds unable to act.
- 3 (04:00) **The Broader Battle Over Property Rights and Tree Laws** - The story shifts to Canton, Michigan, where a tree protection ordinance sparked a major legal fight over the limits of city power.
- 4 (08:54) **The Secret Clear-Cut That Sparked a Lawsuit** - In 2018, the township discovers that property owners clear-cut 16 acres of forest without permits, leading to a demand for a $500,000 remediation fee.
- 5 (10:20) **A Property Rights Lawyer Joins the Fight** - Chance Weldon of the Texas Public Policy Foundation takes the case, arguing the tree permit fees are an unconstitutional taking of private property.
- 6 (15:05) **The Sixth Circuit Ruling: A Win for Property Rights** - The court rules Canton's tree permit system is unconstitutional because its fees are not proportional to the specific harm of cutting down each tree.
- 7 (17:01) **Canton's Response and the Broader Implications** - The township rewrites its tree law to require individualized arborist assessments, but the ruling alarms urban planners about the future of environmental permits.
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Show Notes
That's because trees are important for air quality, for flood control, and for public health. They help keep neighborhoods cool on hot days. But some think that tree protection laws have gone too far — that they might even be unconstitutional.
On today's episode, it's the latest showdown between property rights and local zoning laws. Typically, towns and cities enjoy a lot of power when it comes to zoning and permits. They can ban certain types of buildings. They can make you paint your house a certain color. But can they make it illegal to cut down a tree? And what does it mean to "own" a piece of property anyway?
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This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Jeff Guo and Amanda Aronczyk. It was produced by James Sneed and Emma Peaslee, edited by Jess Jiang, and fact-checked by Vito Emanuel. It was engineered by Robert Rodriguez and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
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