The Federal Government Has a Lot of Unused Land. Can We Sell It Off To Build Houses?
The biggest landowner in the United States is the federal government, which controls about a quarter of the country’s real estate. A lot of that land serves as military installations, national parks, and nature preserves. A lot of it, particularly out West, is sitting unused.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) owns close to 70 percent of the land in Nevada, over 40 percent of the land in Utah, and roughly a quarter of the land in Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, and Wyoming.
Much of this is in the middle of nowhere and unlikely to be developed even in the best of circumstances. Some of it rings existing urban areas or is interspersed among already developed, privately owned parcels.
With housing prices ballooning in the once-affordable Mountain West, politicians of both parties have started to seriously consider selling off some of that excess, unused acreage for home development. There’s certainly a lot of executive energy behind the idea. President Donald Trump’s characteristically ostentatious campaign trail promise was to build 10 low-tax, low-regulation “freedo
Article from Reason.com
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