Utah Sen. Mike Lee Touts Selling Off Federal Lands as a Solution to Housing Crisis — ProPublica

On Monday, June 23, a crowd of about 2,000 folks surrounded the Eldorado Lodge & Spa in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the place members of President Donald Trump’s Cupboard had come for a gathering of the Western Governors’ Affiliation. “Not on the market!” the group boomed. “Not one acre!” There have been ranchers and writers in attendance, in addition to workers of Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory, all of whom use public land to hike, hunt and fish. Contained in the lodge ballroom the place the governors had gathered, Michelle Lujan Grisham, the New Mexico governor, apologized for the noise however not the message. “New Mexicans are actually loud,” she stated.

On the road, one signal learn “Defend Public Lands,” with a picture of an assault rifle. Others bore artistic and bilingual profanities directed at Trump, Secretary of the Inside Doug Burgum, who oversees a lot of the nation’s public acreage, and Sen. Mike Lee, the Republican from Utah, who on June 11 had proposed a large-scale selloff of public lands. Lee, who chairs the Senate Committee on Vitality and Pure Assets, was not in Santa Fe, so the group centered on Burgum, who earlier that afternoon had addressed the governors about power dominance and synthetic intelligence. “Present your face!” the group chanted. However he had already departed the lodge via a again door. That evening, a searching group projected a picture of him on the outside wall of the lodge. “Burgled by Burgum,” it learn.

Within the weeks earlier than the assembly, the potential of promoting off massive swaths of public lands had appeared as doubtless as at any time because the Reagan administration. On June 11, Lee had launched an modification to the megabill Congress was debating to reconcile the nationwide price range. The modification mandated the sale of as much as 3 million acres of land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Administration, with the overwhelming majority of proceeds going to pay for tax cuts. Though Lee had framed his measure as an answer to the West’s acute lack of reasonably priced housing, it could have allowed builders to pick the land they most desired. Beneath the modification’s authentic language, the last word energy to appoint parcels on the market fell to Burgum and Brooke Rollins, head of the Division of Agriculture, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service.

Within the days after the Santa Fe protest, the outcry from searching and outside recreation teams escalated throughout the West and the Senate parliamentarian dominated that Lee’s modification violated the chamber’s guidelines. Republican lawmakers from Montana opposed the modification; Burgum additionally distanced himself from it. (“It doesn’t matter to me in any respect if it’s a part of this invoice,” he instructed a reporter on June 26.)

By the point Burgum made his feedback, Lee’s effort appeared doomed, and days later he introduced that he was eradicating the modification; public land advocates celebrated. “This win belongs to the hunters, anglers, and public landowners,” wrote Patrick Berry, the president of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. However the celebration could have been untimely. In a social media publish asserting his resolution, Lee indicated that he would revisit the difficulty: “I proceed to consider the federal authorities owns far an excessive amount of land,” he wrote. And highly effective forces nonetheless assist privatization. On the Santa Fe gathering, Rollins had been requested throughout a press convention in regards to the effort to promote federal land. She instructed reporters she wasn’t acquainted with the specifics of Lee’s modification however supported his broader imaginative and prescient and prompt such efforts will proceed whatever the destiny of the modification. “Half of the land within the West is owned by the federal authorities,” stated Rollins. “Is that actually the correct resolution for the American folks?”

The circumstances that led to Lee’s proposal proceed to simmer. The American West has an acute lack of reasonably priced and attainable housing. In accordance with the Nationwide Low Earnings Housing Coalition, Colorado, with a inhabitants of 6 million, is lacking 175,000 rental models for individuals who earn as much as 50% of space median earnings. New Mexico, which has one-third of Colorado’s inhabitants, is missing 52,000 such leases; Utah, 61,000. However nowhere is the difficulty as acute as in Nevada, the place Las Vegas and Reno are encircled by public land. The state of three.27 million is estimated to lack 118,000 such leases.

The dearth of housing emerged as a lever for Lee, who has sought to problem federal management of public lands since he was first elected to the Senate in 2010. A yr after successful his seat, he launched a invoice to promote a restricted quantity of public land, saying, “There is no such thing as a crucial want for the federal authorities to carry onto it.” In 2013, he and others in his state’s delegation wrote a letter demanding the switch of federal lands to Utah and angrily accusing the Bureau of Land Administration, which manages 245 million acres nationwide, of “apparent abuse.” And in a 2018 handle at a suppose tank, he in contrast federal land managers — and individuals who recreate on public acreage — to feudal lords, ruling from far-off kingdoms on the coasts. He additionally denounced “elite publications” that advocated for the safety of public lands, and he used the language of political warfare to explain the battle over federal land: “It can take years, and the struggle might be brutal.” (Lee’s workplace didn’t reply to detailed questions from ProPublica.)

However this spring, Lee discovered assist from unlikely locations: the coastal elites he beforehand railed towards appeared open to a few of his concepts. The arguments in favor of privatization and improvement use a phrase of the season: abundance. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s bestselling e-book of the identical identify argues that burdensome regulatory processes have crushed the American housing market. Whereas the authors concentrate on rising provide in city areas, in April, The New York Instances ran an op-ed calling for constructing housing on public lands. That very same week, the Instances Journal, in a bit titled “Why America Should Sprawl,” framed outward development, together with via the sale of public lands, as all however inevitable. The American Enterprise Institute, a free-market suppose tank, has estimated that the nation may construct 3 million houses by opening federal land. In December, AEI leaders advocated for federal land gross sales within the Las Vegas Review-Journal, promising that disposal may “usher in housing abundance and prosperity.”

When pitching his land-sale invoice, Lee adopted a extra reasonable tone than in years previous, focusing squarely on housing. On June 20, he posted on X, “That is to assist American households afford a house.” On June 23: “Housing costs are crushing households.” The following day: “This land should go to American households.”

However it’s difficult to construct reasonably priced housing on public land for a bunch of causes, amongst them the excessive price of infrastructure comparable to water pipelines and the cumbersome bureaucratic processes involving land companies. However a main impediment is the value of that land itself: When it’s offered at market charge, it’s extraordinarily troublesome for builders to create reasonably priced houses. “Excessive land prices alone can kill an in any other case nice reasonably priced housing challenge,” stated Waldon Swenson, vp of company affairs for Nevada HAND, which builds reasonably priced rental housing.

Actually, previous public land gross sales have created little or no reasonably priced housing. There’s only one distinguished check case, in Nevada, the place a 1998 regulation permits the sale of federal land at market charge within the Las Vegas Valley and at steeply discounted costs all through the state if it’s for use for reasonably priced housing. Although municipalities should purchase BLM land at $100 per acre to create reasonably priced housing, the regulation has to this point created nearly 850 reasonably priced models on 30 acres of land. In contrast, the regulation’s market-value mechanism has enabled the sale of greater than 17,000 acres of land at a median of greater than $200,000 per acre. In March, the BLM sold 42 acres for $16.6 million. In the meantime, based on a latest analysis, rents in Clark and Washoe counties have respectively risen by 56% and 47% since 2018.

Lee’s modification did little to deal with these points and lacked any definition of reasonably priced or attainable housing. Moreover, it allowed personal builders to appoint parcels on the market — at market charge solely. “It could be an unmitigated catastrophe,” wrote Mark Squillace, a professor of pure assets regulation on the College of Colorado regulation faculty. John Leshy, a former solicitor for the Division of the Inside throughout the Clinton administration and an emeritus professor on the College of California School of the Regulation, San Francisco, stated that the invoice was “not a well-designed scheme to get extra acres on the market constructed with reasonably priced homes.” Leshy, the creator of “Our Widespread Floor: A Historical past of America’s Public Lands,” added, “I believe it’s only a ploy to get your toe within the door to begin promoting off plenty of federal land.”

Congress’ stance towards public land shifted as settlers moved westward, violently displacing tribal nations. Through the homesteading period, the Basic Land Workplace — a precursor to the BLM — was tasked with disposing of federal lands to states. However within the late nineteenth century, states started to request that Congress put aside lands for nationwide forests. As a situation of its statehood, in 1896 Utah relinquished any declare to possession of “unappropriated public lands” — an acknowledgment that seems in its state Structure. Because the conservation motion took off within the early twentieth century, lawmakers and presidents put aside extra public land. In 1976, Congress handed the Federal Land Coverage and Administration Act, which codified the BLM’s position in stewarding lands and declared that they’d stay public until their sale served “the nationwide curiosity.”

Lee has lamented the affect of these historic modifications on Utah, the place 42% of the state is BLM land, saying in a 2018 speech, “Manifest future had left us behind, in some respects.”

A motion within the Nineteen Seventies tried to reverse these historic currents when Western ranchers and lawmakers calling themselves “Sagebrush Rebels” sought to assert federal lands for states. They discovered sympathetic ears in Washington, D.C.: Ronald Reagan, throughout a 1980 marketing campaign cease in Salt Lake Metropolis, stated, “Rely me in as a insurgent.” As soon as elected, he nominated as secretary of the Inside James Watt, an legal professional who favored switch of public lands to the states. Reagan additionally got here to depend on an financial adviser named Steve H. Hanke, who arrived on the White Home from Johns Hopkins College. Hanke was extra strident about eliminating public lands than Watt; he has written that public lands “symbolize an enormous socialist anomaly in America’s capitalist system.”

Hanke helped drive an bold effort to get rid of nationwide forests and grazing lands, and in 1982 the Inside Division introduced plans to promote hundreds of thousands of acres — as a lot as 5% of the general public property — with the intention to cut back the nationwide debt. Hanke later joined The Heritage Basis, entrenching the concept of privatizing lands on the conservative suppose tank and predicting that Individuals would come round to his mind-set. Since then, the muse has recurrently advocated for promoting public lands. (The muse didn’t reply to inquiries from ProPublica.)

Lee is deeply tied into The Heritage Basis, which he has known as “a guiding gentle for generations.” In 2016, The Heritage Basis prompt that Trump nominate Lee to the Supreme Court docket. Amongst Utah’s management, his positions on federal land are extensively held. Final yr, the state legal professional basic filed go well with to the USA Supreme Court docket, in search of to grab 18.5 million acres of federal public land. The courtroom declined to listen to the case.

Public lands are well-liked, particularly amongst hunters, hikers and off-roaders, and periodic efforts to promote them have incurred wrath. In 2017, Jason Chaffetz, the previous Utah consultant, retracted a disposal invoice after a backlash. Final December, a survey of 500 Utah voters commissioned by the nonprofit Grand Canyon Belief discovered {that a} majority of each Democrats and Republicans supported preserving nationwide monuments within the state. In its preelection coverage advice often known as Venture 2025, The Heritage Basis known as for the privatization of every little thing from public schooling, utilizing school-choice packages, to Medicare, by mechanically enrolling sufferers in insurer-run plans. However it notably didn’t name for the privatization of the general public property.

As an alternative, Lee has not too long ago centered the controversy on reasonably priced housing. In 2022 and 2023, Lee launched laws to promote Western lands known as the HOUSES Act. The invoice was extra prescriptive than his reconciliation modification: It solely allowed states and municipalities to appoint lands for disposal, moderately than builders, and it required that 85% of nominated parcels be developed as residential housing, at a minimal of 4 houses per acre, or as parks. However like his modification to the reconciliation invoice, Lee’s HOUSES Act lacked a definition of reasonably priced housing, and critics prompt that it could result in the constructing of mansions. In each 2022 and 2023, when Lee reintroduced the invoice, it didn’t cross out of committee.

However it caught the eye of Kevin Corinth, then the employees director on the Joint Financial Committee, which advises Congress on monetary issues. After leaving the Capitol, Corinth joined the American Enterprise Institute, which started specializing in constructing housing on federal lands. This March, AEI held an occasion with highly effective builders to debate its concepts, which it known as “Homesteading 2.0.” Edward Pinto, a former Fannie Mae govt who helps oversee AEI’s housing analysis, stated throughout the occasion that the proposal “grew out of an effort that Sen. Lee undertook with the HOUSES Act.”

AEI advocates for dense improvement of single-family houses, however its final imaginative and prescient stays opaque: The group has spoken of making unregulated “freedom cities” removed from present infrastructure, and its proposals for 3 million homes appear bold. Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit group in Montana, revealed an analysis discovering that present public land may assist lower than 700,000 new houses; Nicholas Irwin, the analysis director for the College of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Lied Middle for Actual Property, stated he discovered Headwaters’ numbers extra convincing.

After I requested Pinto for a real-world instance that illustrates his hopes for the West, he pointed to Summerlin, a deliberate group in Las Vegas, and Teravalis, a forthcoming improvement in Buckeye, Arizona, a quickly increasing metropolis at Phoenix’s edge. Each are owned by Howard Hughes Holdings, a developer primarily based in Texas.

Housing in Summerlin isn’t simply attainable — its median house worth approaches $700,000. Teravalis, in the meantime, was first proposed greater than 20 years in the past and has been beset by delays, partly on account of ongoing litigation with the state, which claims that the developer has not confirmed that it could actually acquire a ample water provide. A spokesperson for Howard Hughes Holdings, which purchased the event in 2021, wrote that the corporate is “working with native stakeholders round long-term water coverage to assist the total construct out of Teravalis for greater than 300,000 residents over a number of a long time.”

Earlier this yr, Pershing Sq. Holdings, which is managed by the billionaire hedge fund supervisor Invoice Ackman, bought $900 million of inventory within the firm. (Ackman, a distinguished supporter of Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign, is now the chief chairman of Hughes’ board of administrators. By way of a spokesperson, he declined to remark for this text.)

Teravalis’ first tons offered for a steep $777,000 per acre with out houses on them, and Hughes’ plans are for two.8 dwellings per acre — lower than 1 / 4 of the determine that Pinto cited as superb for naturally reasonably priced housing. Hughes is presently planning a grand opening for November. The corporate didn’t say how a lot houses would price, however a spokesperson wrote in a press release, “The necessity for brand new housing within the Phoenix West Valley is pressing, and Teravalis will assist meet that demand.”

When given the choice, builders usually pursue the revenue margins of high-end housing. In 1998, Congress handed a regulation, the Southern Nevada Public Lands Administration Act, that permits any of the state’s municipalities to request the sale of federal lands for reasonably priced housing. (SNPLMA depends on the Division of Housing and City Growth to outline reasonably priced housing, which it says are models inside attain of these making as much as 80% of the realm’s median earnings.) Nonetheless, so far, solely about 900 acres have been put aside for reasonably priced housing tasks below the regulation — and solely 30 of these acres have been developed into houses the place low-income residents can truly dwell.

It’s unclear why so few reasonably priced housing tasks have been constructed at a time when they’re so desperately wanted. Clark County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick attributed it to bureaucratic delays: “It’s taken a very long time to get via the method with the BLM.” In accordance with Maurice Web page, govt director of the Nevada Housing Coalition, the typical time the BLM takes to evaluation tasks has not too long ago dropped — from between three and 5 years to at least one. Solely at that time can a developer shut a deal. Tina Frias, CEO of the Southern Nevada Residence Builders Affiliation, stated such delays will be crippling.

In 2023, the BLM started promoting Nevada land for reasonably priced housing for $100 per acre. (Earlier SNPLMA reasonably priced housing gross sales had averaged practically $35,000 per acre.) Nonetheless, native authorities haven’t requested the switch of many parcels in recent times. In accordance with the BLM, solely three new reasonably priced housing tasks are shifting towards approval.

In a press release, a spokesperson for the company wrote, “BLM Nevada can solely provide land after it has been nominated by an eligible entity and BLM has confirmed that there are not any encumbrances or restrictions on the parcel. In lots of circumstances, the restrictions referenced by stakeholders originate with the nominating entities themselves.”

SNPLMA’s reasonably priced housing mechanism can also be poorly understood. Alexis Hill, the chair of Washoe County’s board of commissioners, which incorporates Reno, instructed me she didn’t know whether or not the reasonably priced housing provision utilized there. (It does.) After I requested Biden’s former BLM director, Tracy Stone-Manning, who now leads The Wilderness Society, whether or not the $100-per-acre provision was relevant statewide, she stated she didn’t know. Squillace, the Colorado regulation professor, additionally admitted he wasn’t certain how extensively the availability utilized.

Steve Aichroth, the administrator of the Nevada Housing Division, acknowledged a disconnect between companies. His workplace is hiring an official to work with municipalities and the BLM. “In case you got here again to us in a couple of yr we’d have higher solutions,” he stated.

Within the meantime, each of the state’s Democratic senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, have proposed laws that might open federal acreage for housing and switch it to belief land for tribal nations — whereas defending different territory for conservation. The governor, Joe Lombardo, a Republican, not too long ago signed a invoice to speculate $183 million of state cash in growing housing for lower- and middle-class residents. Elsewhere within the West, New Mexico is leasing state lands to develop residences. In Utah, the state housing workplace is encouraging cities to vary zoning necessities to extend density; it’s also utilizing public funds to finance personal developments and trying to construct on state lands. Earlier than Lee pulled his modification, I spoke with Steve Waldrip, who directs housing technique for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. Throughout our dialog, Waldrip expressed concern that the hyperpoliticized debate round a broad federal land sell-off was hampering centered efforts to alleviate the area’s housing disaster. “There’s no silver bullet that’s going to resolve the affordability disaster,” he stated.

However some proceed to consider a easy resolution exists. After Lee’s modification died, I spoke with Pinto, who directs AEI’s efforts to push for housing on federal lands. He struck a conciliatory tone, given the political local weather. (The sweeping GOP invoice handed Thursday with out Lee’s modification.) In the intervening time, Pinto stated, there doesn’t look like a simple path to promote massive swaths of public land for improvement. “The trail ahead is to have a way more focused strategy.”

In Nevada, such a factor is already taking place. Final yr Clark County purchased 20 acres from the BLM for $2,000, and the county’s plan is to show that land into single-family homes for first-time homebuyers. This spring, a brand new reasonably priced housing improvement opened in Las Vegas — an condominium advanced for folks 55 and older with hire beginning at $573. The challenge was constructed by a developer known as Ovation on former public land that was transferred via SNPLMA. It had taken some time — the deal was first proposed in February 2020. However not too long ago, the tempo of transfers has picked up. Ovation says it’s additionally engaged on an analogous challenge within the metropolis of Henderson. It was nominated for BLM approval final February and, based on Jess Molasky, the corporate’s chief working officer, “We hope to be within the floor within the first quarter of subsequent yr.”