Lawmakers have set their sights on a long-time solution to a nationwide housing shortage: federal land.
Politico reported earlier this month on the emergence of bipartisan support to target public lands for new housing developments.
“It’s simple in theory,” the magazine reported. “The federal government — which owns roughly 28 percent of the land in the U.S. — would open up bidding for parcels to developers who commit to keeping a certain percentage of the units at an affordable level for the local population.”
“Imagine having a county where over 90 percent of the land can’t have housing despite many acres being appropriate for development, all because it’s federally managed,” Republican Rep. John Curtis of Utah told Politico. “The idea is a practical solution, and including it in the Republican platform is welcome news for Utahns struggling with housing affordability.”
Curtis, who won the Utah Republican Senate primary earlier this summer, introduced legislation to allow the sale of federal acres to state and local governments to build new homes. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah proposed a similar bill in the upper chamber.
The federal government owns just under a third of all land in the United States, with 92 percent across 12 western states. Roughly 63 percent of Utah’s land is federally managed, while other states similarly struggling with high housing costs, such as California, Oregon, and Nevada, also govern just a fraction of the property within their own borders.
The federal government owns 45 percent
