As Atlanta keeps building to (try to) accommodate its exploding population, the lush, green tree canopy that earned it the “City in the Forest” nickname is steadily vanishing. Meanwhile, so are affordable housing units.
The Atlanta City Council is considering legislation that would make it more challenging and expensive for developers to uproot trees for construction — but residential developers and housing advocates warn that adopting a stiffer tree-protection ordinance could frustrate the city’s ability to produce much-needed housing, especially affordably priced units.
Atlanta’s current tree-protection ordinance, adopted in 2001, caps the penalty per acre at $5,000 for developers to cut down trees for construction projects. The city uses the fines collected to replace the tree elsewhere. The new measure would remove that cap and spike the cost to remove a tree — a so-called “recompense” fee — by almost 800%.
As local developer Windsor Stevens Holdings readied a Beltline-adjacent property to build The Proctor — a 137-unit Westside apartment complex with 41 affordable units — it paid the city almost $20,000 to remove 19 trees. Under the proposed ordinance, that same undertaking would cost $155,000, said Rod Mullice, the firm’s founder.
“For most small-scale developers, they don’t have the resources to comply with this,” Mullice told Atlanta Civic Circle. The ordinance could stifle multifamily and single-family housing production in the city’s more suburban, more tree-shaded communities — where residential development is most needed — he added.
Atlanta’s current tree-protection law says the city can charge $100 per tree, plus $30 for every inch in diameter by which a removed tree outmeasures its replacement. As Bisnow explained it, under the current ordinance, cutting down a tree with a 10-inch trunk diameter, so that the city can plant a 6-inch diameter tree elsewhere, costs developers an extra $120.
The updated ordinance, proposed by City Councilmember Michael Julian Bond, would sharply increase the $30 charge per inch of trunk diameter to $260, and it would remove the $5,000-per-acre cap on clearcutting trees.
The nonprofit HouseATL has urged the city council to retain a cap on the cost-per-acre for developers to remove trees — and to waive fees for all projects including affordable units. That would help contain construction costs for affordable housing to meet Mayor Andre Dickens’ goal of producing and preserving 20,000 units of affordable housing by 2030, says HouseATL executive director Natallie Keiser.
“Our members are very concerned about the obstacles that aspects of this ordinance present to that [20,000-unit] goal,” Keiser told councilmembers in an April 18 email obtained by Atlanta Civic Circle.
But Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit that plants trees for the city and helped draft the new ordinance, insists that recompense fees have been too low for too long — and that the proposed update would set the tree-replacement fees at an appropriate level.
“[Developers are] paying a fraction of what it costs to plant a tree,” Trees Atlanta executive director Greg Levine told Bisnow. “The prices is much more. We know they don’t want to pay, but that is the true cost to try and replace the canopy eventually.”
The updated tree-protection ordinance does discount the tree-removal penalty for affordable housing construction: Multifamily developers would receive a 50% discount to the removal penalty per tree if the rent for at least 15% of units is priced for households making 80% or less of the area median income ($86,000 for a family of four). The discount would also apply if 10% of the units rent at prices affordable for those earning up to 60% of the AMI ($64,500).
The city would waive the tree-removal penalty altogether if a multifamily developer produces more deeply affordable rental units: If at least 20% of units are priced for families earning up to 50% of the AMI ($53,750) or if at least 40% are priced at up to 60% of the AMI ($64,500).
There are similar provisions for condos and single-family homes that are for sale.
Another sticking point for housing advocates and developers: a requirement that newly built single-family homes have a certain number of trees planted on the lot, depending on its size.
“All single-family lots have a minimum number of trees […] that are required to be growing on site prior to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy,” the ordinance says. For instance, using the rubric of 21 trees per acre, it would require a single-family parcel measuring between 0.2 acres and 0.34 acres to have from four to seven trees. The ordinance would require trees to be kept or planted in the front yard of all new single-family homes.
That would make some single-family lots virtually impossible to build on, said Eric Kronberg, the principal of Kronberg Urbanists + Architects.
His firm specializes in smaller-scale residential construction, including smaller homes and accessory dwelling units on existing single-family lots.
“The ordinance is absolutely forcing a battle between trees and housing, which is a deeply unfortunate conflict to provoke,” said Kronberg, a staunch advocate for increasing residential density in Atlanta.
In an interview, he accused the city of “trying to outsource [the preservation of] our tree canopy to private development,” when the municipality itself should instead shoulder more of that financial burden.
To that end, the city’s Housing Commission, an independent body formed by the Atlanta City Council to provide housing policy recommendations, suggested the city government dedicates public financing — including, potentially, a bond — “to create long-term funding for canopy management and relieve the [tree-protection ordinance] from sole fee-generating responsibility.”
“This will allow flexibility in the [ordinance] fee structure to utilize a combination of fees and incentives to achieve its goals, not just punitive measures,” the commission said in a March letter to city officials.
Bond, the ordinance’s lead sponsor, said he’s been working on updated tree protections for years, and resistance from the development industry has only recently cropped up.
“I don’t think everyone is going to be satisfied with what we put out,” he said. “But I don’t really think that going another six months or even more than 30 days [before passing the ordinance] is really necessary, because every day that we delay, we’re losing our tree canopy.”
The ordinance is currently held in the council’s Community Development and Human Services committee.