To the Editor:
Princeton is beginning work on a new, unified Zoning Code. This is a municipality’s most powerful and fundamental tool for planning its future land use and reflecting the values underlying it.
The updated code should address two urgent issues mentioned repeatedly in Princeton’s master plans and public forums: affordability and the town’s ever-decreasing tree canopy. Despite good intentions, irresponsible development throughout Princeton is undermining both. The sad chronology of one Princeton house demonstrates how the two issues intersected devastatingly.
Three years ago, the modest split level across the street was refurbished, adorned with climbing rose bushes, and sold. A respectable house for anyone, but especially for a family desperate to buy but unable to compete with investors acquiring such properties throughout town.
No one moved in. Instead, for three years it became a mini–Home Depot: building supplies stockpiled in the garage and multiple daily visits from a van that transported them to other building sites. The waste of a worthy house, a distressing impact on the street, and undoubtedly an impermissible use in a residential zone.
The yard was never mowed: waist-high grass, egregiously violating the 8” limit. A Health Department notice appeared, detailing the violation — no abatement. Deer and ticks have enjoyed a comfortable home.
Two men began attacking two, healthy, mature pin oaks near the side property line. (Among the few on our street not affected by bacterial leaf scorch.)
The contractor was advised that the contiguous neighbors never received proper notice: a copy of the tree removal permit application as required by Princeton’s tree ordinance. He responded that he had a permit, granted by the Zoning Board, to destroy both trees, per owner’s wishes. One near the footprint of the planned massive new house, the other an innocent bystander that “the owner doesn’t want.”
We offered to discuss with owner the innumerable benefits of shade trees — especially indispensable in scorching summers and pre-drought conditions. No answer.
Concerned about the increasing transience of the neighborhood, we asked the contractor if the owner of the new house was at least going to live there. “Depends on whether she likes it when it’s finished.”
Wasted house, diminished canopy — both critical for a whole neighborhood, both sacrificed for one outsized home. Affordability and canopy preservation are being undermined by this sacrifice of hundreds of invaluable trees in the name of private property. Yet stormwater, erosion, pollution, heat, wind, carbon emissions, dwindling bird and insect habitat, harm to nearby trees — these are not private. The ecology of the whole neighborhood deteriorates.
Eight weeks later, the trunks of those two oaks still lie on the ground like beached whales, an omnipresent, heartbreaking rebuke to those who would casually destroy irreplaceable resources for the indulgences of one house.
Permitting the heedless destruction of mature trees — our greatest ally against climate crises — facilitates the building of gargantuan (often investor-owned) homes. Princeton’s new Zoning Code should encourage us to regard and regulate trees as the community assets they are, hopefully curtailing the demolition of affordable homes.