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| Most federal lands are located in the West. Map includes Native American lands held in trust. (Bureau of Land Management map via Wikipedia) |
Many Americans continue to struggle with the country's longstanding shortage of affordable housing. Opening some federal lands to real estate development is one solution the Trump administration has put in motion; however, the prospect faces numerous challenges and is limited by the geography of federal lands.
"Last month, federal officials created a task force that would identify and release federal land that could be used for housing development," reports Madeleine Ngo of The New York Times. The initiative has bipartisan support and could be particularly helpful for western states. The idea is not a solution for states that don't have swaths of federal lands, which tend to be east of the Mississippi.
The obstacles developers face include a lack of existing infrastructure, such as water and sewer, and resistance from environmental groups that want federal lands protected against human intrusion. Also, some western residents dislike the idea of more neighbors and work against development.
The concept could provide thousands of homes in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado. Ngo explains, "Some analyses have found that releasing more federal land could result in the construction of millions of new homes. Selling about 544,000 acres of developable land — or about 0.2 percent of the land that the Bureau of Land Management oversees — could result in the construction of 1.5 million new homes on land near existing cities over the next decade."
Even with bipartisan support, the process of moving the idea from a concept to active development could be slow and doesn't address the problem in the eastern half of the country. "Releasing federal land could take years because of stringent procedures, and the federal effort alone would not be enough to make up the nation’s entire shortfall of homes," Ngo reports. "Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giant, has estimated that the nation is short about 3.7 million housing units."
Even with its limitations, some builders are enthusiastic about the possibilities. Ngo adds, "Dan Dunmoyer, the president of the California Building Industry Association, said the biggest challenge facing homebuilders in the state was a shortage of land that was both affordable and suitable for housing development." He told her, “Land is hard to find. If there is land that’s adjacent to urban cores that’s available, that would be of interest to us.”
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/OpMmunR Building housing on federal lands could help some Americans, but the idea faces limits and obstacles - Entrepreneur Generations
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