Referred to the House Committee on Agriculture.
The Neighborhood Tree Act of 2026 amends the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act to create a Neighborhood Tree Fund administered by the USDA Forest Service.
The Fund provides grants to states, tribes, local governments, organizations, and volunteer groups for tree planting, maintenance, canopy assessments, and resilience projects, prioritizing high-poverty, low-canopy, high-heat, and formerly redlined communities.
It requires community engagement, canopy assessments, climate-informed project design, species selection, and monitoring, limits assessment spending to 10 percent, and authorizes escalating appropriations for FY2025–FY2029.
Programmatic, popular local benefits increase prospects, but multi-year spending and equity/climate framing add political friction and appropriations risk.
Relative to its intended legislative type, this bill clearly defines the problem and creates a new, substantial statutory funding authority integrated into existing law, with defined eligible recipients and project priorities. It provides explicit multi-year appropriations and some statutory limits, but delegates many implementation, administrative, and accountability details to the Secretary.
Liberals emphasize environmental justice and resilience benefits
Liberals emphasize environmental justice and resilience benefits
Generally strongly supportive because the bill directs federal resources to environmental justice, urban heat mitigation, and community-led green infrastructure.
The emphasis on priority communities, redlining acknowledgment, and funding increases aligns with equity and climate resilience goals.
Cautiously supportive: the bill is targeted and evidence-based, but raises fiscal and implementation questions.
Support hinges on measurable outcomes, oversight, and avoiding redundancy with existing programs.
Skeptical or somewhat opposed due to new federal spending and program expansion into local urban forestry.
Prefers state/local solutions and private incentives over recurring federal grants.
Reached or meaningfully advanced
Reached or meaningfully advanced
Still ahead
Still ahead
Still ahead
Programmatic, popular local benefits increase prospects, but multi-year spending and equity/climate framing add political friction and appropriations risk.
The bill has not accumulated any surfaced votes yet.
Liberals emphasize environmental justice and resilience benefits
Programmatic, popular local benefits increase prospects, but multi-year spending and equity/climate framing add political friction and appr…
Relative to its intended legislative type, this bill clearly defines the problem and creates a new, substantial statutory funding authority integrated into existing law, with defined eligible recipients and project prio…
Go beyond the headline summary with full stakeholder mapping, legislative design analysis, passage barriers, and lens-by-lens tradeoff breakdowns.