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 residents, nonprofit organizations and local businesses to plant and maintain 3,500 new street trees in low-canopy neighborhoods, including Bayview-Hunters Point, the Tenderloin, Civic Center, Mission and portions of the South of Market neighborhoods.

This important initiative is made possible by a $12 million federal grant awarded to San Francisco Public Works in 2023 by the U.S. Forest Service. The aim is to plant and maintain new street trees, create green jobs and establish resilient neighborhoods.

During the five-year grant, Public Works and its partners will recruit, hire and train 30 workforce development participants with the goal of preparing them for permanent positions in city government and/or the private and nonprofit sectors. The grant allows us to plant more street trees than we have in decades by providing a significant investment in urban forest expansion while providing jobs where they’re needed most, buttressing economic independence and growing grassroots entrepreneurship.

The scope of work includes surveying potential tree planting sites, preparing new tree basins, conducting community outreach, planting street trees and watering the 3,500 new trees during their three-year establishment period. They then will be added to Public Works’ ongoing 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 officials and numerous community organizations, applied for the historic U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service Inflation Reduction Act grant. Later that year, after a 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 census tracts. The initiative provides much-needed economic investment by creating green jobs in low-canopy 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
Winter 2025: Community outreach begins
Spring/Summer 2025: First 250 of 3,500 grant-funded trees planted
2026-2029: Continued community outreach, tree planting and tree watering.

Launch

Our urban forestry inspectors have begun identifying suitable tree basins within grant areas, and the first plantings began in 2024. The project reached its first major milestone in June 2025, as our landscape, inspection, cement and arborist crews worked alongside community volunteers to plant the first 250 of the 3,500 grant-funded street trees. We will continue to engage community members in the planting process through community events and public service announcements, with support from nonprofit organizations serving Bayview–Hunters Point, Civic Center, South of Market, Mission and Tenderloin neighborhoods.

Building on this strong planting momentum, the Bureau of Urban Forestry will plant an additional 250 trees by the end of June 2026, including 100 trees on Arbor Day in Supervisorial District 3. With support from grant funding, new street trees will take root in some of the City’s least leafy neighborhoods—including Chinatown, Union Square, North Beach and Lower Nob Hill. Meanwhile, Public Works is inviting nonprofit organizations to partner with us in planting thousands more grant-funded trees in 2026 and beyond.

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 grant-related planting, volunteer initiatives and workforce training.

Growing a More Robust Tree Canopy

San Francisco trails many large U.S. cities with one of the smallest urban tree canopies, with 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 unevenly distributed among the City’s neighborhoods, with underserved census tracts having only about half the canopy compared with more robust street tree canopies in other neighborhoods or districts.

Canopy coverage in federal-grant-supported districts lags better-resourced 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 least-leafy communities will benefit most from grant-funded plantings as they’ll realize the pollution-absorption, shade-providing qualities street trees bring; that, in addition to the well-paying arboricultural jobs the grant will generate.

While Public Works runs the StreetTreeSF program approved with overwhelming voter support in 2016 that sets aside approximately $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 U.S., 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.

Proposed grant-funded planting areas are the blue and red census tracts.

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.