Shared ground: Coalition forms to promote affordable housing on public lands

SALT LAKE CITY — In the wake of several efforts to use public lands to develop affordable housing last year, advocates for both formed a coalition to determine what it would take to make that goal a reality.

In the time since, the self-proclaimed "unprecedented alliance" — which included more than 60 organizations ranging from religious and civic entities to national conservation and housing activists — put together a joint framework of principles that rejected the political platitudes of last year's proposed federal land sell-offs as a solution and detailed priorities they believe will help the idea succeed.

They published their findings, called "Shared Ground," last week.

"Protecting public lands and addressing housing affordability are not mutually exclusive, but complementary priorities that, when aligned, allow us to strengthen communities and achieve durable, equitable outcomes," reads the document.

The two communities recognize how necessary tackling the housing crisis is, but decided to work together due to their mutual dissatisfaction over proposals that did not substantially address affordability, nor value the public interest in federal land.

"It was the frustration that brought all of us together — the big huge silver bullet fixes that keep getting bandied about aren't actually addressing the problem," said Michael Carroll, the Bureau of Land Management campaign director for The Wilderness Society.

By coming together, they also collected the people able to assist, should the effort to use public lands for affordable housing gain more momentum. They hope that might happen because they do not think the underlying idea is a bad one. They say executing it successfully will require more forethought and planning.

"It's easy to have a good overarching idea — it's the devil is always in the details," said Kim Johnson, senior policy director for the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "It's always more difficult to put together the specifics."

Core principles

The coalition came up with four core principles that "set clear expectations" so that housing-related use of public lands "advances genuine community benefit," ensures long-term affordability and continues to protect public lands.

The first is that any law or bill that disposes of public lands must include "binding, legally enforceable requirements" that the developments are used for affordable housing.

The second is to make sure the process of allocating parcels for housing first considers already developed sites and areas under existing land-use plans allowing for development. To this point, they added that it's paramount for federal agencies to gather local input prior to starting projects.

The groups also wanted to make sure that conservation, recreation and cultural safeguards are in place so that lands that are of particular significance — particularly tribal lands — are not lost to development in the shuffle.

The last point was that the two ideas — maintaining public lands and building affordable housing — are not treated as opposing ideas and used to justify throwing one out for the sake of the other.

The principles suggest a less heavy hand from the federal government and a push toward local management.

"I have learned through our work with our public lands partners that local interventions, strategic planning, thoughtfulness at a community level is nuanced, possible, important and we don't want to stand in the way of that," said Noëlle Porter, director of government affairs for the National Housing Law Project.

"There might be a way that a federal proposal could be nuanced, thoughtful, and well-planned but, right now, we're really encouraging folks to slow down at the federal level and think about all the things that would need to go into it."

Not a new idea

The idea to use public lands for affordable housing came up several times in the weeks and months leading up to last summer's reconciliation bill, but has been around for far longer.

It's an idea that Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has pursued for years. In 2022 and 2023, he proposed two variations of the Houses Act, which would allow parcels of federal public land to be sold to states for housing.

In a YouTube address, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced a partnership to address the 7 million home shortage that the country is facing by identifying "underutilized federal lands suitable for residential development and streamline the land transfer process."

The joint task force the two agencies formed has yet to release any details.

Then the actual suggestions to explicitly sell public land came from two members of the Utah delegation. First, Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, suggested selling a series of specific parcels in southern Utah for necessary municipal projects (as well as one large parcel abutting Zion National Park), but that proposal was scrapped prior to reaching the House floor.

Then came Lee's proposal to sell a percentage of public lands to offset the national debt. He limited the scope using parameters such as proximity to population centers. The backlash was massive and bipartisan, even if it was supported by many in his home state.

Proposal lacking

For Porter, it was not the idea itself that bothered her so much, but the fact that the bills getting pushed did not "actually address affordability or affordable housing needs in these particular places" that made her want to find a solution to the issue.

"Mike Lee put out a proposal for the reconciliation package that really was just a wholesale of federal lands. And they put affordable housing in the title as if this was a solution," she said. "And that just really ticked me off."

She said that's because she did not see any contextual details in the various bills that would lead specifically to affordable development. As such, she called the proposals "thoughtless" and "disingenuous."

Without a specific coordinated plan that included developer restrictions, she said the most likely use case for the public lands would not be affordable housing.

"When I look at a federal proposal, they're looking at thousands of acres of land, it's located in the middle of deserts or forests, etc.," Porter said, "The amount of infrastructure you would need to make that habitable, community-ready, etc., is wild."

Though the coalition was born out of frustration, the good idea to find ways to use public lands for affordable housing brought people together, even if that was just to start brainstorming what it would take to achieve their lofty goal.

"We love what seems like an easy answer or what seems like it could be plausible if not for the considerations and limitations of reality," Johnson said. But she said that's just not the way things work.

"For us, it was let's not waste time on kind of these fantastical ideas that don't offer a real solution when we know what actually needs to be done in order to address the affordable housing crisis."

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