The Trump Administration announced a new effort Monday to explore using federal land for housing development.
Federal officials said the country is short about seven million affordable housing units, and the joint task force led by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was pitched to identify “underutilized” federal public lands that could facilitate this development.
“Our federal lands are an incredible asset on America's balance sheet,” said Burgum in a video announcing the partnership. “We’ve been discussing how we can efficiently and effectively steward these underutilized areas to solve our nation’s affordable housing crisis.”
The announcement comes as many cities and rural communities across the Mountain West struggle with housing affordability. About half the land in the West is owned by the federal government.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the secretaries argue that “much of” the 500 million acres the Interior Department oversees is suitable for residential use. HUD’s role will be to identify where housing is most needed and Interior will find places that can support housing while taking environmental and land-use restrictions into account. They plan to study the underused land and “reduce the red tape” to more easily lease or transfer it to states or localities.
Using federal land to solve the nation’s housing challenges has occasionally been a bipartisan approach. Both President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris supported it during their campaigns.
President Joe Biden opened up some federally owned parcels for housing, including 20 acres of Bureau of Land Management Land near Las Vegas, which the federal government sold below market value to Clark County for households making $70,000 or less. The White House also called on agencies to identify land they own where housing could be built.
These developments tended to fall in already dense areas or were part of specific programs with tight parameters.
Critics question whether much public land is “suitable,” or desirable, for housing, and worry that opening up vast amounts of land for development could be a slippery slope to losing more open and environmentally important spaces. The secretaries anticipated this sentiment in their announcement.
“This isn't a free-for-all to build on federal lands, although we recognize that bad-faith critics will likely call it that,” they wrote in the op-ed. “It's a strategic effort to use our resources responsibly while preserving our most beautiful lands.”
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
