It’s my tree. Why can’t I cut it down?

**Sarah Bond** (0:01)
This is Planet Money, from NPR.

**Jeff Guo** (0:06)
The day that Sarah Bond finally became a homeowner, she had almost given up. It was 2021, the housing market was red hot. She and her husband Joel kept getting outbid. They were starting to think maybe their family would never have a place they could make their own. Place where she and Joel could plant blueberry bushes. Place where their daughter Jojo could raise baby ducks and chickens.
Then she got a call from her realtor.

**Sarah Bond** (0:29)
She left a voicemail and she said, congratulations and I was like, what?
I started like, I was like, no way and I told my husband, he was like, are you serious? Are you kidding?

**Amanda Aronczyk** (0:44)
The house that was now their house was white with black trim, two stories tall. It was nicer than she ever thought she could afford. It was located in their dream neighborhood, on a tree-lined street in southwest Portland.
She remembers when they first went to visit the area.

**Sarah Bond** (1:00)
And as soon as we open the doors of the car, we just hear like an eruption of children laughing and screaming, and there was all these kids rolling down the hill, and they're just tumbling all over each other. And it's just like magic.

**Jeff Guo** (1:16)
Sarah's favorite part about their new home was the huge yard. She used to work at a garden center and she loved how many plants and trees were grown around their home.

**Amanda Aronczyk** (1:25)
About a week or two after they move in, Sarah's in the backyard when she realizes that one of the trees is growing at a kind of weird angle. It's this huge Douglas fir, it's like a hundred feet tall, and it is so big that standing in the backyard, she couldn't even see the top of it, and it is leaning towards the house.

**Sarah Bond** (1:45)
When I first noticed the lean, my immediate feeling was like, oh my gosh, this should have been taken out like yesterday. Like, this is really scary.

**Jeff Guo** (1:58)
It was like this tree of Damocles just looming over them. Sarah kept picturing it falling.

**Sarah Bond** (2:03)
This tree wasn't gonna fall and put a hole in our roof. It was gonna fall, and we would be lucky to walk away.

**Amanda Aronczyk** (2:12)
Sarah and Joel start looking into how to remove a hundred foot tall tree from your backyard. They find out that they need to get approval from the city, because in Portland, like in many places, any time you want to remove a large tree, you have to apply for a permit.

**Jeff Guo** (2:29)
And Sarah's like, well, clearly this tree is dangerous, so let's just get this permit. They go online, fill out the forms. Pretty soon, a city inspector comes to look at the trees, and a couple weeks later, Sarah and Joel get the letter.

**Sarah Bond** (2:42)
I have a memory of my husband walking into the living room and saying, oh, they denied our permit. I was like, what?

**Amanda Aronczyk** (2:50)
The city had determined that the leaning tree looked healthy and normal, and that removing this tree would significantly affect neighborhood character. So the city would not let the bonds cut down their tree.

**Sarah Bond** (3:04)
It was so surreal. And like, I couldn't, I was in this state of disbelief for a long time.

**Jeff Guo** (3:12)
Sarah was like, wait, this is not a city tree. This is our tree in our own backyard.

**Sarah Bond** (3:18)
I don't understand how we are the owners of the tree. If we have no power over making a decision about it, it makes no sense.

**Amanda Aronczyk** (3:28)
In recent years, hundreds of towns and cities in America have passed laws to protect trees, to preserve the urban canopy for the good of the neighborhood.

**Jeff Guo** (3:35)
And these laws are redrawing the line between what belongs to the property owner and what belongs to the community. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jeff Guo.

**Amanda Aronczyk** (3:45)
And I'm Amanda Aronczyk. Here in the United States, the general rule is that towns and cities have a lot of power when it comes to land and how people use it. Towns and cities can pass zoning laws, they can ban certain types of buildings, they can even require houses to look a certain way.

**Jeff Guo** (4:00)
But can a city actually stop you from cutting down a tree in your own backyard? Today on the show, when does a zoning law go too far? And how the fight over tree laws is changing the answer to that question.