The Trump administration proposed to sell some amount of undesignated federally owned land for housing development, and Senator Mike Lee — a Utah Republican — introduced legislation to enable that move.
This one is tough because all sides are being incredibly dumb.
We're not going to build low-income housing in the middle of miles of untamed forest. Stop pretending this is about housing.
If you want to sell land, tell everybody specifically what land you want to sell. "We'll figure it out later" is something I NEVER trust the government with.
On the other hand, the idea the government has to own 80% of Nevada forever is also stupid. We have PLENTY of land that can be sold without issue, but this brings us back to 2.
It would be FAR easier/cheaper/better to revitalize the hollowed-out husks of existing towns -- but that might lead to some inconvenient discussions about WHY those towns/neighborhoods are hollowed-out in the first place.
And of course, the biggest issue is this is supposedly going to raise like $10 billion, which is like an afternoon of spending for government. We could also JUST PRINT THE $10 billion -- which is how we handle every other issue. Without actually tackling the spending, we're just throwing pebbles into the river.
Said another way, I would not mind the government raising some money, except that I know what they will do with it. The land will be gone, the money will be gone, and some woke NGO or non-profit will have enriched left-wing grifters.
We need to reactivate the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, and rename it the Harry Reid Memorial Shit Hole. If the feds own 80% of Nevada, perhaps it can be expanded down to Las Vegas.
Why? They have to enforce a crappy tax code they didn't write. If you don't like the tax code, piss on Congress and the President, not the IRS.
You're like the anti-war and SDS scum spitting on soldiers returning from the Vietnam War, many of whom were drafted. Blame the assholes who passed the laws and got us into wars, not the lowly workers and soldiers.
Yes, you flamming humporless a Hole I am a boomer and it was a joke. that said in response to your overwrought comment- You are correct the assholes who work for the IRS didnt write the code, that said they make damn certain to enforce it with the maximum ruthlessness and illogic. Maybe you were so busy licking toadie goverment ass you didnt notice.
I wouldn’t care if the land was owned by the state if I trusted the government to allow grazing, mining, drilling, waste storage and other commercial uses. As we have seen the recent trend has been to restrict commercial use of federal lands for political purposes bowing down to the climate crisis loons, radical environmentalists and favored donors. If that’s how it’s going to work then, sell it off.
The population of Idaho, Utah, and Nevada has gone up I'm guessing at least 8-fold since they became states. There are probably areas of all 3 states where industry, maybe housing as well, is expanding to the limits of what non-federal land is realistically available.
I don't think the Feds should own all that land. I did not agree with Mike Lee, however, that the land is needed for "affordable housing." That (for people I know) was the sticking point, not the selling of it per se. Much of the land is leased for ranching/grazing, etc, and I certainly wouldn't mind it being sold for those uses, and/or for the states to decide on good use for it themselves. (I know a lot of what was proposed was the hopscotch squares that aren't contiguous to other federal land.) But affordable housing?!
We don't need "affordable housing" (which always becomes a slum) - we need to get the illegals out to free up existing housing that is literally everywhere being taken up by 20 million people who shouldn't be here. Even if we "just" deport people who have been here illegally 5 years or less and all the ones with criminal records or prior deportation orders, that frees up a ton of housing.
If the people using the land for ranching, grazing, whatever, want to keep doing so, they should buy it. If it has a better use for something else, well, this is America, dammit. Whoever values it the most, as determined by the market, should own it.
why not sell it to the states for $1 and let the states decide what to do with it. that's the democratic thing to do
i'm not under the influence and i'm not kidding
selling federal land isn't going to reduce a multitrillion dollar deficit. and it might just wind up in the hands of bill gates, the ccp, bitcoin farms and data centers which will destroy the infrastructure wherever they land
Agree in principle, but not if the governor of said state is even more an enemy of the people and the constitution than the feds are. And maybe the feds didn't acquire the land from said state, but from private interests. If the feds own 85% of Nevada, is it just to the long-suffering taxpayers of Nevada to gift the federal lands to another set of politicians and bureaucrats? New boss same as the old boss?
Exactly. It would end up in the hands of billionaires, just like previously sold federal land in the Northern Midwest. Then it's not usable for any part of the public. Having Kill Gates own more land shouldn't be allowed. Having the CCP, or some other foreign country, own more of our land should be totally illegal. The rest of what you mentioned is also an utter waste of our land.
Chris- Thank you for this. As a person who started a career in house building and design 40 years ago in order to solve the Housing affordability issue, this is of particular interest to me. The closing of Federal lands to sale for housing has resulted in both land scarcity and the mind-boggling stupid practice of taking FARMLAND out of production to build housing. While land shortage plays it's part what REALLY drives up the cost of housing is the demand to get permits and follow codes. Recently I lost my 120 year old house in the Altadena fire. The Construction type, singlke wall board and batt was outlawed by the codes in 1940. The Code nazis want $50,000 in permit fees to consider allowing me to rebuild the house and another 30 in fees to build the studio. This for a property that I paid $95,0000 forty years ago. on top of that teh code nazis are imposing $10k in useless interior water sprinklers, 20k worth of Type X and labor under the roof and wall siding, air conditioning insulation and super expensive uber tight windows and doors that require air heat exchangers that run 24/7 to save the planet and protect me, honest. All of this adds to the cost of the house at least half. True my house was ranch hand housing when built. it was affordable housing for working class people. We have OUTLAWED that possibility. Yes we should be selling some Federal land as the population grows BY BORTH, but the population by immigration should be restricted if for no other reason than land water and timber are not infinite resources. But the biggest problem isnt land its the totalitarian building and planning departments and they are not federal, those totalitarians are state and local beasts. On that note, i note that whenever builders, architects or designers have found a way to design a cheap safe even good looking house the code boys find ways to make it complex and expensive so that there is no longer any advantage to it. They are our biggest problem.
In my opinion, the insanity of the coding is all by design. They really don’t want you to rebuild. If enough of you don’t rebuild then they can zone housing off that piece of land.
MAGA is neither conservative nor right-wing, though conservatives and right-wing people align with it for lack of options.
The notion that federal land ownership should continue lest rich privateers commandeer everything is no less silly than the notion that we should have communism to prevent inequality.
I empathize with the right-coding framing because it justifies federal involvement within a sphere that also values its limits. It could be seen as an exception to the rule, or It's a way of saying: Here's another, valid way to look at this issue that doesn't necessarily conflict with conservative principles.
I think this is what leads to the political debate Chris would like us to have, one that gets back to first principles and seeing them through this and that lens (with different "codings" perhaps making arguments that find common ground in terms of shared values).
like everything, the problem comes to bear in the details. i lived in MT for a long time, and hope to move back soon. i understand Zinke's point and it comes from people in his state who 30 years ago, used to hunt and hike and fish on "public land" freely, and for the most part on private land too. over the last several years, land (mostly private) has been acquired by folks who wish to shut off those activities (see bozeman/big sky, ted turner, bill gates). with private land dried up, they are worried that selling fed land will do more of the same. furthermore, once 4B year old natural land is built into condos, it is condos forever, until it becomes a ghetto... the entire TV show "yellowstone" was basically about this concept.
i am not opposed to the federal selling of land per se, and i am a big believer in private property rights. but i dont see what is being accomplished by this sale (at least nobody has explained it in truth or terms i understand). if selling 100MM acres was a one time "pay off the debt" move, then OK, im intrigued. it seems more like a "pay off 35 minutes of current federal spending" move right now?? the idea of "building affordable housing" seems pretty suspect to me. nobody is building affordable housing on the 80% of NV that is federal, save for 1% of those areas that are the most pristine. im not really in support of selling off yellowstone to condo developers?? i dont have a full US topo map in front of me at the moment, but i sincerely doubt the land to build the next circumference of houses in all of our cities and towns is federal land.
im a person that believes the homestead act was the single most important piece of legislation to make america what it is today. if this can be cogently explained as some new version of that, im on board. but we can only sell the land once, and this just reeks of another grift of one sort or another... also keep in mind we have several states where real estate transactions to foreigners are well over 10%. im not sure selling 80% of NV to china is an idea that is fully developed??
I get what you said about Montana. I tried to move there, only to discover that rental prices made it untenable. People don't realize that in a world where 1% hold a large portion of the money, giving them power to obtain land is the most direct return to old style feudalism in a modern setting as you can get.
First, “I hate Mike Lee” is not an argument, and reveals the speaker’s bias. Underscored by her photos of National Parks, which are not for sale.
Second, housing—affordable or not—won’t be built on Utah or Nevada Federal public land because it’s desert. There’s no water. It’s called the Great Basin because it’s empty.
Third, the underlying value is extractive—oil, gas, minerals. That’s what galls the “I ran sheep to the Sawtooths” crowd. And they have a point. Actually, two. I lived in Utah until I couldn’t breathe the air. Grazing and mining permits cost less than a latte—poor asset management. Problems of pollution and overgrazing have not been solved by Federal ownership/management. How will private ownership be better/worse?
off topic but 'twas named gavin 1960 was an uncommon name. but the current slimeball wrecking CA leads me to changing my name to adolf as more sympatico. or perhaps pol pot.
I have to recuse myself from your request. As a native Californian from Santa Monica (non-elite, and being from there I know elite!) my life was ditching school to go to the beach and every weekend heading to the desert (or Las Padres National Forest). I did grad school on the East Coast where I learned there was little to no public lands of any worth, and later I worked on projects in Texas and Colorado where there’s no place you can just go off road to enjoy the solace of . . . nothing.
Admittedly I’m not a native of any of those places (and I also lived in Florida where only natives would want to spend the night with mosquitos and other creatures with blood lust). There may be spots the locals might share.
One of my biggest objections to self-driving cars is that you lose the option to say, “I’m getting off the freeway here and I’m going to see where that dirt road takes me.” (Took awhile for my NY bride to get the appeal, but I can send you photos of her with big smiles in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts!)
I suspect most of the value is in Federal land like the Westwood VA. Billions of future dollars tied up there. Most of the Mojave and the Sonoran deserts have been combed for valuable minerals. Maybe I’m clinging to a young man’s search for unexplored lands, even still as an adult old man. So, I recuse myself.
The leftist Feds don't do land management well at all. They don't practice proven fire management programs, they close vast tracts to the American citizens and rightful owners, they actively persecute ranchers and allow grazing lands to be degraded through mismanagement. The Feds have no business owning this much land, especially when it constitutes huge percentages of some states. Government is the problem, still.
Senator Lee's claim that the sale of public federal lands was for needed housing is transparently untrue. Much of public land is far from urban centers and people want housing where there is employment or business opportunity, in urban areas. The housing problems in the US are due to inflation and overall economic and political mismanagement; selling public land will not resolve the issues of unaffordability, high interest rates, contractors not building due to uncertainty, house insurance rates being too high or not available at all, etc.
A possible solution might be found in a model like the one in the state of Idaho which has no national parks. The state's people have rejected the Park assignation as it limits access and use of public lands by the public. Monuments and Reserves instead allow access and use of the land.
Come up with a credible strategy and conservatives may be swayed. For now, the government has the lowest credibility possibly it has ever had, and the corporate/banking buddies waiting to swoop in on congressional fire sales of our public lands are not trusted either.
"...more significant discussion and a journey to first principles"
That translates into a long walk by yourself, maybe a couple of others. Very few people are willing to actually think and the more significant share are ready to bark like trained seals on cue.
This one is tough because all sides are being incredibly dumb.
We're not going to build low-income housing in the middle of miles of untamed forest. Stop pretending this is about housing.
If you want to sell land, tell everybody specifically what land you want to sell. "We'll figure it out later" is something I NEVER trust the government with.
On the other hand, the idea the government has to own 80% of Nevada forever is also stupid. We have PLENTY of land that can be sold without issue, but this brings us back to 2.
It would be FAR easier/cheaper/better to revitalize the hollowed-out husks of existing towns -- but that might lead to some inconvenient discussions about WHY those towns/neighborhoods are hollowed-out in the first place.
And of course, the biggest issue is this is supposedly going to raise like $10 billion, which is like an afternoon of spending for government. We could also JUST PRINT THE $10 billion -- which is how we handle every other issue. Without actually tackling the spending, we're just throwing pebbles into the river.
Said another way, I would not mind the government raising some money, except that I know what they will do with it. The land will be gone, the money will be gone, and some woke NGO or non-profit will have enriched left-wing grifters.
YES
We need to reactivate the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, and rename it the Harry Reid Memorial Shit Hole. If the feds own 80% of Nevada, perhaps it can be expanded down to Las Vegas.
We should house all the nations IRS workers there.
Why? They have to enforce a crappy tax code they didn't write. If you don't like the tax code, piss on Congress and the President, not the IRS.
You're like the anti-war and SDS scum spitting on soldiers returning from the Vietnam War, many of whom were drafted. Blame the assholes who passed the laws and got us into wars, not the lowly workers and soldiers.
it was a joke, son
What are you, Mr. Lamb's wife or mother? Only he knows if it were a joke.
OK Boomer?
Yes, you flamming humporless a Hole I am a boomer and it was a joke. that said in response to your overwrought comment- You are correct the assholes who work for the IRS didnt write the code, that said they make damn certain to enforce it with the maximum ruthlessness and illogic. Maybe you were so busy licking toadie goverment ass you didnt notice.
okay moorty
Seconded!
I wouldn’t care if the land was owned by the state if I trusted the government to allow grazing, mining, drilling, waste storage and other commercial uses. As we have seen the recent trend has been to restrict commercial use of federal lands for political purposes bowing down to the climate crisis loons, radical environmentalists and favored donors. If that’s how it’s going to work then, sell it off.
The population of Idaho, Utah, and Nevada has gone up I'm guessing at least 8-fold since they became states. There are probably areas of all 3 states where industry, maybe housing as well, is expanding to the limits of what non-federal land is realistically available.
🎯🎯🎯
I don't think the Feds should own all that land. I did not agree with Mike Lee, however, that the land is needed for "affordable housing." That (for people I know) was the sticking point, not the selling of it per se. Much of the land is leased for ranching/grazing, etc, and I certainly wouldn't mind it being sold for those uses, and/or for the states to decide on good use for it themselves. (I know a lot of what was proposed was the hopscotch squares that aren't contiguous to other federal land.) But affordable housing?!
We don't need "affordable housing" (which always becomes a slum) - we need to get the illegals out to free up existing housing that is literally everywhere being taken up by 20 million people who shouldn't be here. Even if we "just" deport people who have been here illegally 5 years or less and all the ones with criminal records or prior deportation orders, that frees up a ton of housing.
If the people using the land for ranching, grazing, whatever, want to keep doing so, they should buy it. If it has a better use for something else, well, this is America, dammit. Whoever values it the most, as determined by the market, should own it.
why not sell it to the states for $1 and let the states decide what to do with it. that's the democratic thing to do
i'm not under the influence and i'm not kidding
selling federal land isn't going to reduce a multitrillion dollar deficit. and it might just wind up in the hands of bill gates, the ccp, bitcoin farms and data centers which will destroy the infrastructure wherever they land
and don't get me started about 15 minute prisons
We Have A Winner!!! Best comment on this post.
Hate to see it sold to California and similar debauched state governments.
Hate it or not, if the land in question lies within an individual state boundary, then that land belongs to that state... see above comment... or
https://i2i.org/what-does-the-constitution-say-about-federal-land-ownership/
Agree in principle, but not if the governor of said state is even more an enemy of the people and the constitution than the feds are. And maybe the feds didn't acquire the land from said state, but from private interests. If the feds own 85% of Nevada, is it just to the long-suffering taxpayers of Nevada to gift the federal lands to another set of politicians and bureaucrats? New boss same as the old boss?
Exactly. It would end up in the hands of billionaires, just like previously sold federal land in the Northern Midwest. Then it's not usable for any part of the public. Having Kill Gates own more land shouldn't be allowed. Having the CCP, or some other foreign country, own more of our land should be totally illegal. The rest of what you mentioned is also an utter waste of our land.
Is any of this land usable as National Parks?
vast energy, mineral, timber and water resources could be utilized to reindustrialize the economy
“sell it to the states for $1”.
Spot on.
Chris- Thank you for this. As a person who started a career in house building and design 40 years ago in order to solve the Housing affordability issue, this is of particular interest to me. The closing of Federal lands to sale for housing has resulted in both land scarcity and the mind-boggling stupid practice of taking FARMLAND out of production to build housing. While land shortage plays it's part what REALLY drives up the cost of housing is the demand to get permits and follow codes. Recently I lost my 120 year old house in the Altadena fire. The Construction type, singlke wall board and batt was outlawed by the codes in 1940. The Code nazis want $50,000 in permit fees to consider allowing me to rebuild the house and another 30 in fees to build the studio. This for a property that I paid $95,0000 forty years ago. on top of that teh code nazis are imposing $10k in useless interior water sprinklers, 20k worth of Type X and labor under the roof and wall siding, air conditioning insulation and super expensive uber tight windows and doors that require air heat exchangers that run 24/7 to save the planet and protect me, honest. All of this adds to the cost of the house at least half. True my house was ranch hand housing when built. it was affordable housing for working class people. We have OUTLAWED that possibility. Yes we should be selling some Federal land as the population grows BY BORTH, but the population by immigration should be restricted if for no other reason than land water and timber are not infinite resources. But the biggest problem isnt land its the totalitarian building and planning departments and they are not federal, those totalitarians are state and local beasts. On that note, i note that whenever builders, architects or designers have found a way to design a cheap safe even good looking house the code boys find ways to make it complex and expensive so that there is no longer any advantage to it. They are our biggest problem.
Hear, Hear!
In my opinion, the insanity of the coding is all by design. They really don’t want you to rebuild. If enough of you don’t rebuild then they can zone housing off that piece of land.
MAGA is neither conservative nor right-wing, though conservatives and right-wing people align with it for lack of options.
The notion that federal land ownership should continue lest rich privateers commandeer everything is no less silly than the notion that we should have communism to prevent inequality.
Very generally, it sounds like a wealth transfer from "the people" to a select few.
🙌 As usual.
I empathize with the right-coding framing because it justifies federal involvement within a sphere that also values its limits. It could be seen as an exception to the rule, or It's a way of saying: Here's another, valid way to look at this issue that doesn't necessarily conflict with conservative principles.
I think this is what leads to the political debate Chris would like us to have, one that gets back to first principles and seeing them through this and that lens (with different "codings" perhaps making arguments that find common ground in terms of shared values).
You see plenty of grazing in Nebraska where 98% of the land is privately owned.
like everything, the problem comes to bear in the details. i lived in MT for a long time, and hope to move back soon. i understand Zinke's point and it comes from people in his state who 30 years ago, used to hunt and hike and fish on "public land" freely, and for the most part on private land too. over the last several years, land (mostly private) has been acquired by folks who wish to shut off those activities (see bozeman/big sky, ted turner, bill gates). with private land dried up, they are worried that selling fed land will do more of the same. furthermore, once 4B year old natural land is built into condos, it is condos forever, until it becomes a ghetto... the entire TV show "yellowstone" was basically about this concept.
i am not opposed to the federal selling of land per se, and i am a big believer in private property rights. but i dont see what is being accomplished by this sale (at least nobody has explained it in truth or terms i understand). if selling 100MM acres was a one time "pay off the debt" move, then OK, im intrigued. it seems more like a "pay off 35 minutes of current federal spending" move right now?? the idea of "building affordable housing" seems pretty suspect to me. nobody is building affordable housing on the 80% of NV that is federal, save for 1% of those areas that are the most pristine. im not really in support of selling off yellowstone to condo developers?? i dont have a full US topo map in front of me at the moment, but i sincerely doubt the land to build the next circumference of houses in all of our cities and towns is federal land.
im a person that believes the homestead act was the single most important piece of legislation to make america what it is today. if this can be cogently explained as some new version of that, im on board. but we can only sell the land once, and this just reeks of another grift of one sort or another... also keep in mind we have several states where real estate transactions to foreigners are well over 10%. im not sure selling 80% of NV to china is an idea that is fully developed??
I get what you said about Montana. I tried to move there, only to discover that rental prices made it untenable. People don't realize that in a world where 1% hold a large portion of the money, giving them power to obtain land is the most direct return to old style feudalism in a modern setting as you can get.
First, “I hate Mike Lee” is not an argument, and reveals the speaker’s bias. Underscored by her photos of National Parks, which are not for sale.
Second, housing—affordable or not—won’t be built on Utah or Nevada Federal public land because it’s desert. There’s no water. It’s called the Great Basin because it’s empty.
Third, the underlying value is extractive—oil, gas, minerals. That’s what galls the “I ran sheep to the Sawtooths” crowd. And they have a point. Actually, two. I lived in Utah until I couldn’t breathe the air. Grazing and mining permits cost less than a latte—poor asset management. Problems of pollution and overgrazing have not been solved by Federal ownership/management. How will private ownership be better/worse?
Ah, here’s the rub , does anyone really want Gavin to control more land ?
Gavin
Gavin does
Appropriate response? Laugh or cry ?
We're Californians -- we do both at the same time.
off topic but 'twas named gavin 1960 was an uncommon name. but the current slimeball wrecking CA leads me to changing my name to adolf as more sympatico. or perhaps pol pot.
Adolf is ruff although I’m cracking up. Maybe Joseph, after Stalin ?
No one East of his house.
Perfect
I have to recuse myself from your request. As a native Californian from Santa Monica (non-elite, and being from there I know elite!) my life was ditching school to go to the beach and every weekend heading to the desert (or Las Padres National Forest). I did grad school on the East Coast where I learned there was little to no public lands of any worth, and later I worked on projects in Texas and Colorado where there’s no place you can just go off road to enjoy the solace of . . . nothing.
Admittedly I’m not a native of any of those places (and I also lived in Florida where only natives would want to spend the night with mosquitos and other creatures with blood lust). There may be spots the locals might share.
One of my biggest objections to self-driving cars is that you lose the option to say, “I’m getting off the freeway here and I’m going to see where that dirt road takes me.” (Took awhile for my NY bride to get the appeal, but I can send you photos of her with big smiles in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts!)
I suspect most of the value is in Federal land like the Westwood VA. Billions of future dollars tied up there. Most of the Mojave and the Sonoran deserts have been combed for valuable minerals. Maybe I’m clinging to a young man’s search for unexplored lands, even still as an adult old man. So, I recuse myself.
Great points. Principles.
The leftist Feds don't do land management well at all. They don't practice proven fire management programs, they close vast tracts to the American citizens and rightful owners, they actively persecute ranchers and allow grazing lands to be degraded through mismanagement. The Feds have no business owning this much land, especially when it constitutes huge percentages of some states. Government is the problem, still.
Senator Lee's claim that the sale of public federal lands was for needed housing is transparently untrue. Much of public land is far from urban centers and people want housing where there is employment or business opportunity, in urban areas. The housing problems in the US are due to inflation and overall economic and political mismanagement; selling public land will not resolve the issues of unaffordability, high interest rates, contractors not building due to uncertainty, house insurance rates being too high or not available at all, etc.
A possible solution might be found in a model like the one in the state of Idaho which has no national parks. The state's people have rejected the Park assignation as it limits access and use of public lands by the public. Monuments and Reserves instead allow access and use of the land.
This map shows land eligible for sale as of 6/14; do we need that much housing?
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/basic/index.html?appid=821970f0212d46d7aa854718aac42310
Come up with a credible strategy and conservatives may be swayed. For now, the government has the lowest credibility possibly it has ever had, and the corporate/banking buddies waiting to swoop in on congressional fire sales of our public lands are not trusted either.
THIS 👆
"...more significant discussion and a journey to first principles"
That translates into a long walk by yourself, maybe a couple of others. Very few people are willing to actually think and the more significant share are ready to bark like trained seals on cue.