Duration in his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump promised to quickly reduce American household prices, including that housing is more affordable.
“We are going to open federal land extensions for housing construction,” Trump said in August. “We desperately need housing for people who cannot pay what is happening now.”
The Trump administration is now trying to follow that promise. Last month, federal officials created a working group that would identify and release federal lands that could be used for housing development.
The announcement is the first important initiative that the Trump administration has implemented to address the affordable housing crisis of the nations. It is an idea that has bipartisan support. Both Trump and Kamala Harris, former vice president and democratic candidate for president, have supported efforts to build affordable homes in certain federal lands.
Housing developers and researchers say that the idea of making more federal lands available for housing development with some promise for Western states such as Nevada and California, where most of the federal land is. But the initiative would do little to increase the supply of housing in other parts of the country where residents also fight with high refuge costs, such as New York and Miami.
There are also other challenges before a house can be built. Most of the Federal Government land lacks the necessary water and sewerage infrastructure to support residential communities. Environmental groups have also expressed the group on the intention of the administration of selling public lands because their possible effect on the wildlife habitat.
As part of the effort, the Interior Department will identify locations that can support homes and will aim to reduce regulatory barriers involved with land transfer or lease to local governments or public housing authorities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will also “identify where housing needs are more pressing” and will ensure that the projects “align with the affordable objectives.”
Federal officials have estimated that 400,000 federal land acres could be available for housing development, said Jon Raby, interim director of the land administration office. The estimate, which will be continuously refined, was determined after officials looked at the land with 10 miles of cities and towns with a population of 5,000 or more, he said.
The effort could be more shocking in states such as California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado, Raby said. The authorities said the lands vary widely and range from deserts and grasslands to mountains and forests. The lands are generally not economical or difficult to handle due to their dispersed or isolated nature and “must meet the specific public interest objectives.”
In addition to the water, energy and servwer systems that would need to be built, federal officials can have to deal with groups that believe that certain areas are a greater habitat or conservation value. Mr. Raby said that the areas that officials were generally looking at a lower conservation value, but that the land management office would carefully review groups.
“People love their public lands,” Raby said. “Each acre is important for someone.”
The land administration office will evaluate the requests of the interested parties, such as state or local governments, which request that specific lands be sold. Then, the agency will evaluate any existing use of the land and the performance of an environmental review and evaluation. Officials could lease the land or sell it to fair market value, according to the agency.
Some analyzes have found that releasing more federal lands could result in the construction of millions of new houses. The sale of around 544000 acres of developable land, or around 0.2 percent of the earth’s land supervisions, could lead to the construction of 1.5 million new houses in the country near the existing cities during the next decade, according to a recent analysis of AMERVIVEE Pinto Andertoe Anderpo -Andere -Andere -otSole -Otros 1.5 million of 1.5 million of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 homes of 1.5 near the next five citations of the new scientists. Found.
David García, the UP For Growth policy director, a Washington headquarters -based research group focused on housing scarcity, said he thought the initiative had “great potential.”
“Many times, when we think of the Federal Land, we think of national parks or the forest or military bases, but there are much more country in urbanized areas than I think people realize,” Garcia said.
Even so, he said that the process of releasing federal lands could take years because or strict procedures, and the federal effort alone would not be enough to invent the entire home deficit of the nation. Freddie Mac, the mortgage financial giant, has estimated that the nation is cut around 3.7 million housing units.
Jim Tobin, president and executive director of the National Association of Housing Builders, said it was optimistic that making more federal lands avoidable for development could accommodate the supply in some of the fastest growing markets in the country, such as Las Vegas and Phoenix.
“Any land we can make available would help in those markets in particular, and then it has the ability to continue to expel the suburbs,” Tobin said.
But Mr. Tinbin said the initiative could face challenges due to local nimbyism, or the attitude of “not in my backyard” that prevents housing construction because some residents fight against a new development in their neighborhoods. “People simply don’t like changes in the place where they live,” he said.
Federal officials say that the new national initiative could replicate the efforts that have already been made in Nevada. A 1998 Law promoted by Harry Reid, who was Senator of Nevada at that time, allowed the land management office to sell certain public lands within the State for purposes such as housing construction. Until now, the agency has sold around 50 federal land acres specifically for the construction of approximately 1,060 affordable housing units in the state.
But some environmental groups have already expressed their group on how the effort could affect public lands. Athan Manuel, the director of the Sierra Club Land Protection Program, said he was open to efforts to build more affordable homes in some lands is close to the developed communities, but that he was deeply skeptical about the effort of the Trump administration. He said he was concerned that the new development could “trample the wildlife habitat” and that the public could lose the land used for recreation.
“We believe this is just a way of privatizing federal lands,” said Manuel. “We are going to assume the sausage of this administration until it is demonstrated that it is wrong.”
Some defenders said they were skeptical about the attempt of the administration to address affordable housing because officials are also watching deep cuts to the housing department as part of a broader effort to reduce the federal government.
Kim Johnson, public policy manager of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said that the construction of more housing in public lands could be set for certain Western states. But she said she was also concerned about “tithing” the workforce of the Housing Department of the Trump Administration and reducing federal resources that could help address the affordable housing crisis.
Mrs. Johnson said she also wanted to see more details about how they would ensure that housing built in federal lands was affordable. “The question is always: how affordable and affordable for whom?” Mrs. Johnson said.
Kasey Lovett, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said that “any effort to optimize the processes and programs of the department will help HUD be more successful in his mission, including the affordable of our.” “
Some housing builder groups said they were optimistic about the effort. Dan Dunmoyer, president of the Association of the California construction industry, said that the biggest challenge facing housing builders in the state was the scarcity of land that was affordable and adequate for housing development.
Dunmoyer said that efforts to release more federal lands could help stimulate housing development in California, since the federal government has approximately half of the land in the state.
“The earth is difficult to find,” he said. “If there is a land adjacent to the available urban nuclei, which would be or interest you.”
