The Department of the Interior has released a plan to sell off federal lands as the U.S. government pursues its goal of offloading some of its real estate holdings.
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Local and state governments, as well as tribes, will be afforded the opportunity to purchase land owned by the federal government, according to a new strategic plan from the Department of the Interior.
The initiative will allow the federal government to “decrease the size” of its estate, freeing it up to instead “focus its resources on primary federal responsibilities and nationally significant federal lands,” according to the DOI’s plan.
Some of the proceeds from the sales will be funneled back to buyers to support land conservation.
The DOI also intends to use some of its Land and Water Conservation Funds, which receive $900M every year and must use a portion on acquisitions, to invest in increasing public access to privately owned lands rather than buying up land.
That move will ensure that the “federal estate does not continue to grow,” the department’s plan reads.
The Trump administration has pushed for development on federal lands, including for homebuilding purposes. Land sales could help the U.S. free up resources, Arthur Gailes, a research fellow at the think tank American Enterprise Institute, told The Washington Sun.
“They are correct in their basic assessment that the federal government could scale back its land holdings a tremendous amount and generate revenue for the federal government,” he said.
Gailes also participated in an AEI proposal to sell unused federal lands next to communities for housing development purposes, potentially creating 1.5 million homes over a 10-year period, The Washington Sun reported.
The federal government has around 640 million acres of federal lands, around 40% of which is overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, Stacker previously reported.
Around 7.3% of federally owned land is within metro areas with housing shortages, according to The Wall Street Journal. But one land sale in Nevada has proven that land alone doesn’t make homebuilding more economically feasible, Bisnow previously reported.
Creating infrastructure, roads and piping for sewer and water systems can tack tens of millions of dollars onto projects. When added to land evaluations, transfers and permitting processes, it can take five to seven years for projects to materialize.
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