Housing on Federal Lands Aims to Ease Affordability Crisis

New York Times

29-04-2025

During his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump pledged to quickly bring down prices for American households, including making housing more affordable.
'We're going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction,' Mr. Trump said in August. 'We desperately need housing for people who can't afford what's going on now.'
The Trump administration is now trying to follow through on that promise. Last month, federal officials created a task force that would identify and release federal land that could be used for housing development.
The announcement is the first major initiative the Trump administration has rolled out to address the nation's affordable housing crisis. It is an idea that has bipartisan support. Both Mr. Trump and Kamala Harris, the former vice president and Democratic nominee for president, have supported efforts to build affordable housing on certain federal lands.
Housing developers and researchers say the idea of making more federal land available for housing development holds some promise for Western states like Nevada and California, where the bulk of federal land is. But the initiative would do little to increase housing supply in other parts of the country where residents also struggle with high shelter costs, such as New York and Miami.
Other challenges also exist before any housing can be built. Most of the federal government's land lacks the necessary water and sewer infrastructure to support residential communities. Environmental groups have also voiced concern over the administration's intent to sell public land because of its potential effect on wildlife habitat.
As part of the effort, the Interior Department will identify locations that can support homes and aim to reduce regulatory barriers involved with transferring or leasing land to local governments or public housing authorities. The Housing and Urban Development Department will also 'pinpoint where housing needs are most pressing' and ensure that projects 'align with affordability goals.'
Federal officials have estimated that 400,000 acres of federal land could potentially be made available for housing development, said Jon Raby, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. The estimate, which will continue to be refined, was determined after officials looked at land within 10 miles of cities and towns with a population of 5,000 or more, he said.
The effort could be most impactful in states like California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado, Mr. Raby said. Officials said the lands vary widely and range from deserts and grasslands to mountains and forests. The lands are generally uneconomical or difficult to manage because of their scattered or isolated nature and 'must meet specific public interest objectives.'
In addition to the water, power and sewer systems that would need to be built, federal officials may have to contend with groups that believe that certain areas have higher habitat or conservation value. Mr. Raby said that the areas that officials were looking at generally had lower conservation value, but that the Bureau of Land Management would carefully review concerns.
'People love their public lands,' Mr. Raby said. 'Every acre is important to somebody.'
The Bureau of Land Management will evaluate applications from interested parties, such as state or local governments, that request specific land to be sold. The agency will then assess any existing use of the land, and perform an environmental review and appraisal. Officials could then either lease the land or sell it at fair market value, according to the agency.
Some analyses have found that releasing more federal land could result in the construction of millions of new homes. Selling about 544,000 acres of developable land — or about 0.2 percent of the land that the Bureau of Land Management oversees — could result in the construction of 1.5 million new homes on land near existing cities over the next decade, according to a recent analysis from Edward Pinto, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Another 1.5 million homes could be built over the next five decades if new cities are developed near existing metropolitan areas, the analysis found.
David Garcia, the policy director at Up for Growth, a Washington-based research group focused on the housing shortage, said he thought the initiative had 'huge potential.'
'A lot of times when we think about federal land, we think about national parks or forestland or military bases, but there is a lot more land in urbanized areas than I think people realize,' Mr. Garcia said.
Still, he said the process of releasing federal land could take years because of stringent procedures, and the federal effort alone would not be enough to make up the nation's entire shortfall of homes. Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giant, has estimated that the nation is short about 3.7 million housing units.
Jim Tobin, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders, said he was optimistic that making more federal land available for development could boost housing supply in some of the fastest-growing markets in the country, such as Las Vegas and Phoenix.
'Any land that we can make available would help in those markets in particular, and then you have the ability to continue to push the suburbs out,' Mr. Tobin said.
But Mr. Tobin said the initiative could run into challenges because of local NIMBYism, or the 'not in my backyard' attitude that impedes housing construction because some residents fight new development in their neighborhoods. 'People just don't like changes to where they live,' he said.
Federal officials say the new national initiative could replicate efforts that have already been done in Nevada. A 1998 law pushed by Harry Reid, who was a senator from Nevada at the time, allowed the Bureau of Land Management to sell certain public land within the state for purposes like housing construction. So far, the agency has sold about 50 acres of federal land specifically for the construction of about 1,060 affordable housing units in the state.
But some environmental groups have already expressed concern over how the effort could affect public land. Athan Manuel, the director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said that he was open to efforts to build more affordable housing on some land that is close to developed communities, but that he was deeply skeptical of the Trump administration's effort. He said he worried that new development could 'trample wildlife habitat' and that the public could lose land used for recreation.
'We think this is just a backhanded way of privatizing federal land,' Mr. Manuel said. 'We're going to assume the worst from this administration until proven wrong.'
Some advocates said they were skeptical of the administration's attempt to address affordable housing because officials are also eyeing deep cuts to the housing department as part of a broader effort to shrink the federal government.
Kim Johnson, a public policy manager at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said building more housing on public land could make a big difference for certain Western states. But she said she was also concerned about the Trump administration's potentially 'decimating' the housing department's work force and cutting federal resources that could help address the affordable housing crisis.
Ms. Johnson said she also wanted to see administration officials provide more details about how they would ensure that housing built on federal land would be affordable. 'The question is always: How affordable, and affordable to whom?' Ms. Johnson said.
Kasey Lovett, a spokeswoman for the Housing and Urban Development Department, said that 'any efforts to streamline the department's processes and programs will help to make HUD more successful in its mission, including addressing our nation's affordable housing crisis.'
Some homebuilder groups said they were optimistic about the effort. Dan Dunmoyer, the president of the California Building Industry Association, said the biggest challenge facing homebuilders in the state was a shortage of land that was both affordable and suitable for housing development.
Mr. Dunmoyer said efforts to release more federal land could help spur housing development in California, given that the federal government owns about half of the land in the state.
'Land is hard to find,' he said. 'If there is land that's adjacent to urban cores that's available, that would be of interest to us.'