The Bureau of Land Management announced this week that it is moving ahead with a plan to sell 20 acres of national public land near Las Vegas to the Clark County Department of Social Services for an affordable housing development.
The proposal is the first under an agreement between the Housing and Urban Development and Interior departments that allows for the targeted sale of federal parcels to create affordable housing. The 20 acres in Nevada would be sold for a below-market value of $100 per acre, as provided by the HUD agreement and the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act of 1998.
The Biden administration’s action today stands in stark contrast to proposals from some elected officials who have called for the wholesale transfer of public lands without safeguards to ensure the giveaway leads to affordable housing.
Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo sent a letter to President Biden this year demanding the transfer of 50,000 acres of public land around Las Vegas with seemingly no restrictions—a recipe for more sprawl and a gift to subdivision developers.
Utah Senator Mike Lee’s HOUSES Act contains a similar prescription, allowing local governments to nominate unlimited acres for transfer to developers along with a meaningless density requirement and no measures to ensure housing affordability.
The Interior department is showing how public lands that are already well-suited to development can be part of the housing solution, with appropriate safeguards to make sure the housing is affordable and doesn’t end up as trophy homes for billionaires. It’s going to happen 20 or 30 acres at a time, not by handing thousands of acres of public land to private developers for sprawling suburbs and McMansions across pristine lands like Governor Lombardo and Senator Lee dream of.
The affordable housing development planned under this week’s announcement would require 80 percent of the units be sold to first-time homebuyers with household incomes at or below 80 percent of the median income for the Las Vegas area, with the other 20 percent going to first-time buyers at or below 100 percent of the area’s median income.
Aaron Weiss is Media Director for the Center for Western Priorities.