Trump Federal Lands Plan Echoes Model with Few Affordable Homes

The Interior Department’s plan to privatize federal lands for affordable housing is based on a model that has resulted in only a tiny fraction of low-cost housing, agency data shows.

So far, only 30 acres of the more than 17,560 acres of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management that have been auctioned in southern Nevada under a 1998 law had been sold directly for affordable housing as of March 31, according to BLM data.

Most of the BLM land sold under the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act was auctioned for market-rate housing built in master-planned communities on the periphery of Las Vegas, said Jon Raby, the BLM’s acting director and its Nevada state director.

Using federal land to alleviate the housing crisis in cities bounded by public land is one of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s top priorities. He said March 17 the agency is working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to find “underutilized” land suitable for up to 7 million affordable homes.

Raby said the agency is studying selling about 400,000 acres—625 square miles—of BLM land around cities large and small under the plan. The Nevada program is a possible model for BLM to use across the West, he said.

Buyers paid a total $3.6 billion for the Nevada land transferred under the law since 1999, the data show.

Under the 1998 law, Congress authorized some BLM land to be sold for housing within a defined boundary around Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is unique because BLM land directly borders the city and its suburbs—the primary constraint to expanded development in Clark County, Nev., which includes Las Vegas, said Tick Segerblom, chair of the Clark County Commission.

“We are so landlocked by the federal government that we have bills in Congress every session to allow us to access some of that land, sell it off, and use it for parks and other things,” he said.

‘That Helps Everybody’

Building any new homes in Clark County helps bring housing prices down, regardless whether they’re considered affordable or market rate, Segerblom said.

“We don’t want to build McMansions, but truthfully, when we have housing within reason, that helps everybody,” he said.

The land transfer program Congress authorized has resulted in a lot of progress boosting housing availability in southern Nevada, Raby said.

“To the degree it’ll help inform department policy as well as new legislation, we can point to examples that have worked,” Raby said.

But creating affordable housing is more complicated than just providing more land for homes, said Phil Chang, a county commissioner in wealthy and fast-growing Deschutes County, Ore., where the cities of Bend and Redmond are surrounded by federal land.

Housing affordability is as much a function of wages as it is land available for development, he said.

“Making more land available doesn’t make housing more affordable all by itself because housing prices here have become disconnected from local salaries and wages,” Chang said.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill in the last two congresses that aimed to make it easier to transfer federal land for housing. The bill never advanced beyond committee and has yet to be introduced in the current Congress.

Lee, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. The House Natural Resources Committee, which would consider the legislation in the House, and its chair, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), declined to comment.

Boon for Public Lands

The 1998 law is a good example of how the Interior Department can address housing shortages while providing benefits for public lands, said Mark Squillace, an environmental law professor at the University of Colorado Law School.

The BLM has been able to use revenue from selling federal lands to acquire new parcels under a law—the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act—passed in 2000, he said.

That law requires revenue from sales of BLM land marked for disposal to be deposited in a special account for the bureau to use to purchase other lands with high conservation or recreation value.

“The revenue from these sales is supposed to be used to acquire private inholdings that are surrounded by public lands,” Squillace said.

Raby said if land privatized for housing in southern Nevada serves as a model for the same to occur across the West, it doesn’t signify the federal government is divesting of its federal lands.

“It’s an opportunity for us to do something meaningful that will address really big challenges we have,” Raby said.

Wildlife Risks

Environmentalists worry federal land sales for housing across the West will destroy habitat for endangered species and threaten their survival.

The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement Thursday that if the BLM follows through with selling 400,000 acres of federal land near cities, 76 different species will imperiled, including Canada lynx and desert tortoises.

The BLM can likely make a case for carefully selling or exchanging small scattered parcels for housing in a way that doesn’t harm species, said Randi Spivak, public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen in this case—that’s the worry,” she said, adding that it appears to be part of a “grand plan to privatize public lands.”