A plan announced last week white house Includes a nationwide cap on rent increases. But another element of the proposal — allocating remaining federal land specifically for affordable housing — may have been overlooked, especially in the wake of the Democratic shakeup in the upcoming presidential election.
“The White House will work with federal agencies that own land disposal authorities and those that provide financing instruments for housing and needed infrastructure, with the goal of quickly building more affordable and climate-resilient housing for working families that will lower energy costs. , while protecting local lands and waters,” according to a White House announcement.
But for a state like Utah, which owns a lot of federal land, questions naturally arise about how such a plan would interact with the state’s vast swaths of land, according to the report. this salt lake tribune.
“Calls to use public lands for affordable housing may be of particular interest to Utah because more than half of the state’s land is controlled by the federal government,” the report explains. “This begs the question – which federal lands are considered ‘Surplus’?” Utah has nearly 12,000 acres of “buildable government-owned land in urban, accessible communities,” according to a Utah study. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and Geospatial Solutions Center As quoted in the report.
According to 2020 data Congressional Research ServiceUtah has nearly 53 million acres of land. More than 33 million acres of land (63.1% of the state) is owned by the federal government.
George McCarthy, president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute, explained that the perception that federal lands somehow limit the construction of affordable housing is inaccurate.
Environmental groups applauded the White House plan, and the Biden administration pointed to the recent sale of 20 acres of federal land in Nevada as an example of how other states can achieve this goal. But the sale complied with previous legislation passed in 1998 that allowed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to acquire diverse federal lands and use them more efficiently for housing development.
The Tribune contacted Nevada Bureau of Land Management official Ron Mobley to learn about the measure. Mobley confirmed that Nevada’s policy has not changed and expressed hope that the White House’s recent moves may benefit other states.
