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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Pursuit of Happiness
Published on
Mar 10, 2025
Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Photo by Maximillian Conacher on Unspash

How Federal Lands Can Be Used to Ease the Housing Crisis

Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin
Senior Research Fellow
Joel Kotkin
Summary
To create affordable homes on federal lands, the federal government shouldn’t sell lands for development — it should lease them.
Summary
To create affordable homes on federal lands, the federal government shouldn’t sell lands for development — it should lease them.
Listen to this article

Next to inflation, Americans ranked housing as their top financial concern in a Gallup survey last May. Since then, it’s gotten only worse. January home sales were down 5 percent from last year’s dismal numbers. Record numbers of first-time buyers are stuck on the sidelines as housing affordability stands at its lowest level in 40 years.

President Trump must follow through on his campaign pledge “to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction.”

The housing market depends largely on interest rates and zoning — factors outside any president’s direct control. But the massive federal land portfolio gives middle- and lower-income Americans a better shot at homeownership. The federal government is the nation’s biggest landowner, holding one-third of all property — a land mass six times the size of California.

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