Housing Policy

The Problem With Mike Lee's Public Lands Proposal Is That It Doesn't Sell Off Enough Land

America's housing shortage is worst in Western states. That's also where the federal government owns the most land.

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A tumbleweed rests on cracked desert ground with a bright blue sky above | Lvphotog1/Dreamstime.com
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Sen. Mike Lee's (R–Utah) proposal to require the sale of a de minimis amount of Western public lands was dealt a potentially fatal blow yesterday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the provision could not be included in the reconciliation bill moving through Congress.

The ruling follows a relentless opposition campaign to Lee's proposal from Democrats, conservation groups, and even some conservatives who've painted doomsday scenarios about Americans' "birthright" being sold off for luxury condo developments.

Lee said yesterday that he's in talks with the parliamentarian to include a scaled-back version of his initial proposal in the budget bill.

Whether that will be enough to win over the parliamentarian remains to be seen. It will almost certainly not be enough to mollify opponents, who've leveled a relentless stream of often inaccurate, contradictory criticisms of the idea that any federal lands might ever be privatized.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D–N.M.) told the Associated Press that Lee's bill would produce not enough development and too much development at the same time.

"I don't think it's clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this. What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies," he said.

The American Conservation Coalition has taken to posting pictures of national parks (which could not be sold off under Lee's bill) to criticize the sale of far less beautiful Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands.

In fact, Lee's proposal is an exceptionally modest version of a generally good idea: that the federal government's vast, unused land holdings could be sold to ease the Western United States' severe housing shortage.

In an essay at his Construction Physics Substack, Brian Potter notes that housing costs in the rural Western United States are exceptionally high compared to rural areas elsewhere in the country.

A new heat map of America's estimated housing shortage produced by the American Enterprise Institute's Housing Center likewise shows Western states as having the largest housing deficits. Only select coastal metros and, particularly, coastal California, are worse off.

Potter attributes the rural West's high housing costs to a mix of more attractive natural amenities, higher housing demand, modestly higher construction costs, and (once California is excluded) modestly tighter housing regulation.

The federal government's vast holdings of undeveloped land on the edge of existing communities are certainly a significant contributing factor.

The BLM owns close to 70 percent of the land in Nevada, over 40 percent of the land in Utah, and roughly a quarter of the land in Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, and Wyoming.

Some of this is in the middle of nowhere and unlikely to be developed. A lot of it rings existing communities or is even interspersed among already developed, privately owned parcels.

A report produced by the Joint Economic Committee Republicans in 2022 estimated that a prior, more ambitious Lee proposal to sell off Western BLM land for housing development could lead to the construction of 2.7 million more homes and completely end the housing shortage in states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Wyoming.

For all the criticism, Lee's current proposal is rather unambitious. Per The Hill's reporting on the latest draft, it would require the sale of between 0.25 percent and 0.5 percent of BLM land. The land could only be used for housing, and it would have to be within five miles of an existing community.

National parks, conservation areas, national monuments, historic sites, battlefields, and every other type of public land that people actually like are explicitly protected from being sold off in Lee's bill.

If anything, the problem with Lee's bill is that it puts far too many restrictions on the sale of federal lands and thus won't meaningfully alleviate the West's housing affordability problems.

Still, any new (privately developed) housing is good housing. If Lee's bill gets a few more units built, all the better.