How Did the Housing Crisis Revitalize Efforts by Western Republicans to Sell Off Public Lands?

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A years-long effort to sell public lands has gained steam in this year’s federal budget negotiations as a proposed solution to the housing crisis, but critics say it’s just the latest attempt to render an unpopular political proposition more palatable.

Reps. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) and Celeste Maloy (R-Utah) inserted a last-minute provision into the House reconciliation bill last month authorizing the sale of public land in Nevada and Utah. Though the bill initially cited 11,216 acres that could be sold, subsequent analysis revealed the true figure could approach 500,000 acres. 

While the provision was ultimately stripped from the final legislation, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told E&E News that he intended to reintroduce language that would authorize public land sales now that the reconciliation bill is being considered in the Senate. During a congressional committee hearing Wednesday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Lee wanted to sell roughly 2 million acres of public land across Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Alaska. Documents released by Lee’s committee later in the day propose going even higher.

Regardless of the outcome, the seriousness with which these proposals are being considered marks a significant shift in American politics. While large-scale public land sales were once a political non-starter, they are now framed as a legitimate response to national shortages in affordable housing while helping to balance the domestic budget with the Trump administration’s tax cuts.

“In past administrations, it was fringe,” said Susan Brown, a lawyer who specializes in federal land management and is principal of Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm. “But it’s gotten a lot more traction over the past couple of months with this Congress and this administration.”

In 2023, Lee, a longtime advocate of transferring all of Utah’s federally managed land to the state, introduced the HOUSES Act, or Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter Act, which would allow state and local governments to nominate federal lands they could purchase at below-market value with minimal restrictions. He revived the idea this year as the Trump administration launched a task force on public lands and housing. 

The Interior secretary and Scott Turner, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), announced plans to inventory underutilized public lands for housing. But the administration’s budget cuts could make that difficult: HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development, which runs programs to increase affordable housing and reduce homelessness, was slated to be slashed 84 percent, NPR reported in February. 

Even as the “public lands for housing” narrative gains steam in Washington, critics say it’s a false promise meant to blunt outrage. Support for public lands spans the political spectrum: A recent YouGov poll for Trust for Public Lands found that 74 percent of Americans oppose such sales, including 61 percent of Trump voters. Additional polling this year from Colorado College shows that 72 percent of Westerners prioritize conservation over development. 

Housing “is a convenient talking point,” said Michael Carroll, a campaign director for The Wilderness Society who focuses on land overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM). “But the reality is, the vast majority of these public lands aren’t hooked to infrastructure. They don’t address transit issues, and it just doesn’t hold up water when you start really looking at the details. This is really about giving away or selling off large parcels of federal public lands for more large-scale development, whether that’s oil and gas development, mining or large tracts of expensive homes that don’t actually address the affordability crisis.”

Other critics suggest the interest in selling public lands is driven by the need to create a revenue stream to help offset tax breaks prioritized by Republicans. 

“This is fundamentally an ideological battle,” says Shaaron Netherton, executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness, who has been outspoken against sell-offs in Nevada. “On one side is the vast majority of Americans who love their public lands. On the other side are out-of-touch congressional members and industry who would rather sell off public lands to give tax breaks to the wealthiest.”

Lee did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Maloy said: “Not all federal lands have the same value. In both Democratic and Republican administrations, for decades, we’ve been disposing of appropriate lands in a manner that’s consistent with what I propose to do here.”

Location, Location, Location

Critics of proposals to sell public lands for affordable housing point to a recent study from the Center for American Progress that found that less than 1 percent of land administered by BLM, which controls the lion’s share of U.S. public lands, is within 10 miles of towns with over 5,000 residents. In other words: The parcels are located far from population centers where housing is in the shortest supply, and where people who need affordable homes can work. 

For instance, 2024’s Truckee Meadows Public Lands Management Act sought to dispose of federal land in Washoe County, Nevada, for a mix of uses, including economic development, conservation and potentially housing. However, Netherton said that only 33 acres of the 30,000 that were designated for possible housing were identified as actually suitable for affordable development. The bill remains pending in the Senate. 

A similar report from Headwaters Economics found that only 0.2 percent of BLM or Forest Service land is within 5 miles of towns with high demand for housing. The parcels instead tend to be mixed in with privately owned lands in far-flung, disconnected and disparate landscapes, making them difficult to develop. 

“We mapped where people are struggling with housing costs, and almost none of those places are close to large blocks of federal land that are appropriate for development,” said the report’s author, Megan Lawson, who leads Headwaters Economics’ research in outdoor recreation and economic development. 

“Infrastructure is probably the single thing that can impact development on public lands,” said Nicholas Irwin, associate professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and research director at the Lied Center for Real Estate.

The proximity of power grids, water supplies, sewer services, roads and broadband connectivity can both raise and lower the cost of developing housing on previously protected lands, he noted. 

“The closer the parcel is to existing development, the higher the cost of the raw land because of the option value,” he said. “This is partially offset by the fact that closer proximity to existing development can lower the infrastructure costs because much of that infrastructure may already exist or be located nearby, so one can tie into it.”

Developing housing on public land often requires building entire infrastructure systems from scratch. Those costs are typically borne by developers, who pass them onto consumers, so the new developments are rarely affordable. 

Rural and exurban areas also face higher costs for emergency services, school buses and maintenance, adding to the public tax burden over time. The Headwaters analysis showed that many parcels proposed for development lacked even basic utility access within a 2-mile radius. 

“In many cases, you’d be building expensive new infrastructure for just a few homes,” said Lawson. “That’s not solving the affordability problem.”

Homes in Harm’s Way

The Headwaters analysis also reveals that many areas targeted for public land sales overlap with regions of high wildfire risk, which is projected to escalate as climate change increases the flammability of areas across the West.

Climate and wildfire models in a 2021 study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment projected that the average annual area burned in wildfires between 2021 and 2050 will double compared to 1991 to 2020, assuming there’s no change in the extent of flammable vegetation. Even models accounting for fire-fuel feedbacks, which consider the reduction of flammable vegetation in previous fires, still project substantial increases in burned areas.

The projections underscore the growing challenges posed by climate-induced wildfire risks in the West, especially in the “Wildland Urban Interface.” The WUI, where housing development abuts forests and other wild areas, is where the deadliest and most destructive wildfires occur. According to Headwaters’ Lawson, areas classified as “very high wildfire hazard” are often the same places being promoted for potential housing. 

“We’re talking about areas that burn frequently, where fire suppression costs are already ballooning,” said Lawson. “Expanding housing there makes no fiscal or safety sense.”

Many Western WUI areas already border federal lands that have always burned in wildfires. Fire suppression in these zones is significantly more costly: Headwaters Economics estimates that fighting fires in WUI developments can cost up to four times more than comparable incidents within town boundaries. Firefighting infrastructure is often limited in these areas, leading to longer response times and a greater potential for loss of property and life. And insurance companies have begun pulling coverage from homes in many of these high wildfire risk zones, raising long-term affordability concerns. 

“We’re talking about areas that burn frequently.”

— Megan Lawson, Headwaters Economics

Drew McConville, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress specializing in conservation and co-author of that group’s study, warns that the proposals to purchase public lands for housing are dangerous. 

“You’re not just building new homes, you’re putting people in harm’s way,” said McConville. “These aren’t sustainable sites for long-term community resilience. We need policies that align with climate resilience. Putting people in the path of wildfires and calling it housing policy is a dangerous sleight of hand.”

These sorts of problems are what critics point to when they characterize the congressional effort as an attempt to whitewash mass sales of public lands to the highest bidder. 

“This isn’t about solving the housing crisis,” said The Wilderness Society’s Carroll. “It’s about using the crisis as cover for dismantling our public lands system.” 

Carroll thinks efforts that allow leasing underused federal buildings and land within existing communities, like the EXPLORE Act, signed into law in January, offer a more realistic path forward. Though underfunded, these programs are rooted in local planning and maintain public oversight.

While selling public lands may not be a viable solution, the problem it seeks to solve is very real, said Alex Horowitz, housing policy project director for The Pew Charitable Trusts. 

“Public land policy should support, not distract from, comprehensive solutions like upzoning [increasing development density], permitting reform and better land-use planning,” said Horowitz. 

Conservationists also warn that short-term land sales could have irreversible ecological consequences, blocking wildlife migration corridors, limiting recreational access and degrading tribal cultural resources. Many public lands, they note, are not “surplus” but critical to ecosystems and recreation. 

Some fear the framework created for the sale of federal lands for housing could become a template for broader disposals of public lands, especially as housing remains a top concern for voters.

“The danger is that this becomes normalized,” said Brown, of Silvix Resources. “That every time there’s a housing crunch, the default response is to start eyeing public lands.”

Said Carroll: “If we can turn this moment into a real conversation about what affordability actually requires—public investment, smart growth, equity—then maybe some good can come of it.”