Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the government is going to fix America’s affordable housing problem by selling off and developing some of its federally-owned public lands. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed that Burgum co-wrote with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, the two cabinet members championed the Trump Administration’s new development strategy that was announced Monday.
The strategy involves an interagency Task Force that would identify and open “underutilized” federal lands — those overseen by the Department of the Interior — for affordable housing developments. The HUD would pinpoint the areas where affordable housing is most needed, while the DOI would identify the building locations and transfer that acreage to states or localities for development purposes.
Citing maximum efficiency, the DOI would “streamline” the regulatory process by removing environmental reviews and other red tape that makes building on federal lands difficult.
This aligns well with Burgum’s oft-repeated goal of treating our public lands like assets on a balance sheet and maximizing their profitability.
“As we enter the Golden Age promised by President Trump, this partnership will change how we use public resources,” the two secretaries write in the op-ed. “A brighter future, with more affordable housing, is on its way.”
Turner and Burgum’s rosy video announcement, which featured a background showing the sun setting over a raw American landscape, was full of these and other hopeful proclamations. It was also woefully thin on details. Their announcement did not include an explanation or definition of what “underutilized” means, for instance. Nor did it mention a cap on how much federal acreage could eventually be transferred or developed.
Perhaps it’s thin on details because the core promise of this ploy — to increase America’s housing supply while lowering costs for millions of us — is just a pretense to dispose of our precious public lands.
This idea that our federal lands are a cure-all to the nation’s housing problems overlooks two critical factors. First, the root cause of the affordable housing crisis is a lack of affordable units, not a lack of developable land. Second, the crisis affects Americans from coast to coast, but the vast majority of DOI land is in the West and is far removed from the metropolitan areas where affordable housing is most needed.
It’s almost like building houses isn’t the point.
Ratcheting Up the Calls for Public Land Transfers
“This is just one step of many that we’ve seen toward the commodification and development of our public lands,” Backcountry Hunters and Anglers government relations manager Kaden McArthur tells Outdoor Life, referring to other thinly veiled attempts by federal and state lawmakers to transfer public lands into private hands.
As one recent example, McArthur points to Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s HOUSES Act, which would make sweeping legislative changes to further streamline the transfer of public lands to state and local governments — all in the name of building affordable housing. However, the proposed legislation doesn’t mention any cap on the amount of acreage that could be transferred or include any safeguards to ensure that those housing developments would actually be affordable.
Read Next: Wyoming Senators Demand 50 Million Acres of Federal Land. It’s Part of a Coordinated Land-Grab by Western States
“It seems like this is a perpetual one way ratchet, and it’s not being done with a real sense of intentional purpose,” McArthur says. “And you know, there are a lot of [Americans] and conservation groups that really want to grapple with this issue [of affordable housing]. It’s a genuine issue. But I think it’s imperative that these are cautious and calculated decisions.”
Besides, McArthur explains, there are already mechanisms in place for federal land managers to dispose of certain public land parcels for things like housing and community infrastructure. Just last year, the Bureau of Land Management (which falls under the DOI) announced plans to transfer 20 acres of federal land in Clark County, Nevada, to be used for an affordable housing development near Las Vegas.
“There are certainly parcels where a well-planned land exchange or some sort of limited transfer” make sense from a development perspective, McArthur says. “But that’s got to be the exception, not the rule.”
Federal Land Transfers Are Not a Silver Bullet
Looking at the United States more broadly, it’s abundantly clear that selling off and developing our federal lands is not a one-size-fits-all solution to America’s affordable housing crisis.
In their op-ed, Burgum and Turner claim that of the more than 500 million acres overseen by the Interior Department, “much of it [is] suitable for residential use.” They fail to mention that the vast majority of this acreage is found in just 11 Western states, with Alaska holding the lion’s share. Around 65 percent of Alaska’s land is managed by the federal government. While in Connecticut — where the affordable housing crisis is more acute, according to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition — that number is closer to .3 percent.
Then there’s the breakdown by agency. Of those 500-plus million acres, around 80 million fall within National Parks, roughly 90 million are within National Wildlife Refuges, and more than 38 million are managed as National Conservation Lands by the BLM.
Neither the DOI nor the HUD responded to requests for comment on whether these kinds of public lands would be considered “suitable for residential use,” or if they fall into the category of “our most beautiful lands” that the two secretaries say they will preserve.
“This isn’t a free-for-all to build on federal lands,” Turner and Burgum write in an attempt to head off criticism from public-land advocates and other skeptics. But without any guardrails or specifics, it’s hard to see their current strategy as anything but that.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s consider the low-hanging fruit in the DOI’s federal land portfolio — the BLM lands in states like Nevada and Utah that have limited public access and low recreational or aesthetic value.
“It would take an enormous amount of work to get much of those Western landscapes into a suitable position for developing affordable housing — the amount of infrastructure that would be needed is astronomical,” McArthur says. “And how exactly is that being achieved, in terms of public and private partnerships? The answer really comes back to: This is not the most effective, nor the most efficient, way to advance housing development.”
Because all this infrastructure would come at a cost — expenses that would theoretically trickle down to the home buyers themselves. Sounds affordable, doesn’t it?
The most effective solutions, according to the Center for American Progress and other groups researching the affordable housing crisis, have nothing to do with our federal lands. The federal government could play a big role in making housing more affordable by enacting policies that bring down housing costs, such as preventing corporations and private equity firms from buying up single-family homes, and incentivizing the construction of affordable homes over luxury apartments and high-end subdivisions.
Zoning reforms and better land-use planning in our metropolitan areas would also go a long way in leveling the playing field for lower- and middle-class Americans. These solutions would likewise benefit our nation’s wildlife, which are being squeezed tighter every year by urban sprawl.
Read Next: As Trump Attempts to Reform Federal Government, Hunters and Anglers Face ‘Unintended Consequences’
“A lot of focus here has traditionally been around access, and the loss of our cherished public lands,” McArthur says. “One thing that often gets left by the wayside is the habitat piece.
“It’s very concerning to think that the first places that would be incorporated for development [under this new strategy] are adjacent to communities that have already gobbled up a lot of wildlife habitat,” he continues. “To be clear: Once these landscapes are gone and out of the federal estate, they’re never coming back.”
Read the full article here
