Sidewalks Busted By City Trees Will No Longer Cost NYC Homeowners

NEW YORK — Homeowners can breathe a sigh of tree-lief. New York City will stop making property owners pay when the city's own trees bust up public sidewalks, officials announced Tuesday.

City officials will no longer slap owners of small buildings with fines for sidewalk damage caused exclusively by trees that the city has planted along the street, Mayor Bill de Blasio's office says.

The old rules left homeowners liable for damage that was not their fault even as the city worked to fix tree-damaged sidewalks, de Blasio said. His administration also pledged to accelerate the pace of such repairs over the next three years.

"We’re not just fixing broken sidewalks — we’re fixing a broken system," de Blasio, a Democrat, said in a statement. "... Now, if a street tree causes damage, we’re taking care of it."

De Blasio announced the deal in The Bronx alongside state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who said fines for damage caused by city trees has been a "huge quality of life concern" for his constituents in the borough.

The Parks Department has planted nearly 700,000 so-called street trees in sidewalks across the city. Tree roots frequently break up the sidewalks, causing damage that the city takes more than a year on average to repair, according to a July audit from City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Many homeowners have faced fines for sidewalk damage from trees that the city planted, according to state lawmakers. Now, the city will stop slapping one-, two-, and three-family homes with liens for damage solely caused by municipal trees, the mayor's office said.

There are 50,000 existing violations that the Department of Transportation will review and cancel if they meet the criteria, according to city officials.

The DOT and the Parks Department will still inspect sidewalks for dangerous conditions, but the city will make repairs wherever the damage is "exclusively tree related," de Blasio's office said in a news release.

City officials also pledged to make fixes in about 5,500 locations by the end of the 2022 fiscal year by ramping up the Parks Department's so-called Trees & Sidewalks program, which the de Blasio administration has supported with additional funding.

"Our plan to repair all backlogged sites over the next three years, combined with new policies around sidewalk violations, will ensure that trees remain a boon to New Yorkers and not a burden," Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver said in a statement.