Build Homes on Federal Land

By Binyamin Appelbaum. From The New York Times. Excerpts:

"The Trump administration is proposing to address the housing crisis in Western cities by opening some of the government’s vast landholdings for development. Last month the Interior Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a joint task force to identify parcels and expedite construction."

"The proposal is easily caricatured as turning national parks into trailer parks, but there’s a lot of Western land that belongs to the government simply because no one else wanted it. It’s scrubland, not El Capitan."

"What cities like St. George need most — and what they mostly refuse to allow — are modest homes and apartments for low-wage workers and families."

"Under a 1998 law, the federal government has auctioned off for development some 35,000 acres of public land around Las Vegas. That land is now covered with thousands of homes, and the proceeds from the sales, more than $4 billion, have mostly gone to protect other public lands and to expand recreation."

"Aside from protected lands, mountains and wetlands, the federal government owns roughly 800,000 acres of land — four times the land area of New York City — that is inside the boundaries of Western cities or within a mile of the city limits, according to an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank."

"First, the federal government should lease land rather than sell it. A 2024 task force co-chaired by Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, a Republican, proposed leasing federal land for housing development because federal lands are not subject to local zoning laws and other forms of municipal obstructionism."

"Second, instead of trying to make money from land sales, the government should pick projects that serve the public interest and then subsidize them by providing the land at a nominal fee. State and local governments have long used similar strategies. Last year, the federal government sold a 20-acre parcel valued at $20 million to Clark County, the jurisdiction that includes the city of Las Vegas, for just $2,000, on the condition that it be used for affordable housing. The county plans to build 210 homes there at prices affordable for families making about $70,000 a year."

" The United States has a housing crisis in large measure because our society has become better at saying no than saying yes. We’ve become so focused on the costs of building that we’ve lost sight of the damage that we are causing by not building."