Trump Studies Selling 625 Square Miles of Federal Land for Homes

The Interior Department is considering selling an area of federal land larger than the city of Los Angeles as part of the agency’s plan to use public lands to help solve the housing crisis.

The agency is studying selling about 400,000 acres—625 square miles—of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management around cities large and small under a previously announced plan for the Interior and Housing and Urban Development departments to work together on using federal lands for housing, Jon Raby, the BLM’s acting director, said in an interview Monday.

The agencies are looking at all federal lands that could be used for housing within a radius of up to 10 miles of all cities and towns with a population greater than 5,000 people, Raby said.

“That’s what we’ve identified as being available for sale,” he said.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said March 17 the agency is targeting “underutilized” land suitable for development that could be sites for up to 7 million affordable homes.

The BLM manages about 245 million acres of public lands, mostly in the West, some of which is protected as wilderness areas and national monuments.

“As an overall proportion it may seem small,” Raby said. “Where these communities are, it can have a big impact.”

Raby said the plan does not call for divesting federal lands. Instead, “it’s an opportunity for us to do something meaningful that will address really big challenges we have,” he said.

Mary Jo Rugwell, president of the Public Lands Foundation, a BLM retiree’s group, said the overall impact on federal lands and resources depends on the details of the bureau’s plan to sell land.

“If the appropriate laws and processes are followed in implementing this goal, I don’t think it will have an intrinsically detrimental effect on public lands,” Rugwell said.