Overseeing millions of acres of mostly undeveloped land, the federal government, under the direction of President Donald Trump, is seeking to use its vast resources to address the availability and affordability of homes around the country.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Scott Turner are the architects behind the new Task Force on Federal Land for Housing, which will seek to identify federally owned land “suitable for residential use,” according to an op-ed penned by the cabinet members. The task force will build on two pieces of previously proposed legislation that would give states greater control over how their land is managed, according to a policy expert who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The truth of the matter is the federal government holds a lot of relatively valuable parcels that most people don’t even know about that are close to metro areas that they’ve got by default or neglect or don’t even necessarily know that they own,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research (IRE) told the DCNF. “They may have a chain-link fence around them or something like that with a sign on them and those would be the ones that they’d be looking for that would be close to existing housing stock or transportation.”
Kish, who spent years working on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the Interior Department, drew on his past experience to provide some insight on the logistics of the task force’s goals.
“It’s just impossible to build anything because of the shortage of land, and yet you’ve got no shortage of land, what you have is a shortage of ownership in private hands and a regulatory regime that keeps people from being able to build anything,” Kish said.
Turner and Burgum are attempting to fulfill Trump’s day-one executive order aimed at “defeating the cost-of-living crisis,” beginning with evaluations of where housing needs are most dire.
Median home prices began to increase rapidly in 2009, before spiking considerably in 2020 and 2021, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data shows. As of May 2024, families paid $13,300 more per year for the same house than they did in January 2021, according to the Heritage Foundation. During former President Joe Biden’s term, housing prices increased by approximately 114.5%, which the conservative think tank attributed largely to the administration’s “runaway spending.”
Areas facing a severe lack of housing will be prioritized by the Trump administration, followed by close collaboration with state and local leaders “who know their communities best,” the secretaries wrote in their op-ed. The federal government oversees roughly 650 million acres, according to the Government Accountability Office, primarily in the Western region of the U.S., with states like Nevada and Utah being over 80% and 60% federally owned, respectively.
“Interior will identify locations that can support homes while carefully considering environmental impact and land-use restrictions,” Turner and Burgum wrote. “Working together, our agencies can take inventory of underused federal properties, transfer or lease them to states or localities to address housing needs, and support the infrastructure required to make development viable—all while ensuring affordability remains at the core of the mission.”
Turner and Burgum made clear that their plan is not “a free-for-all to build on federal lands,” and Kish reinforced the point that this task force will not advocate for building homes in national parks, but rather will take inventory of underused resources in local communities.
“There’s gonna be people who scream bloody murder and say they’re selling off the national parks, but that’s hyperbole,” Kish said. “In essence what we’re talking about here is taking a look at our resource base and seeing whether it doesn’t make some sense to free it up.”
Kish also said that while some states might initially have a shaky response to the task force, he sees other states “chomping at the bit” to gain access to federal land, especially Utah, where Republican Sen. Mike Lee has advocated for the ability to build housing on federal land for years.
“Utah has been fighting for more control over its land for a long time,” Kish said. “The ability to have more control over federal lands and more say-so over what happens on federal lands within its reach would lead [states] to a different conclusion. I think ultimately states would see it in the benefit to have a stake in ownership or partial ownership or more of a say in how their lands are managed.”
The task force’s housing plans stem from the groundwork of Lee’s Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter (HOUSES) Act which was introduced in the Senate in 2023. The act is cosponsored by Republican Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso of Wyoming and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — who each represent states with large concentrations of federally owned land that could be used to provide housing.
“The DOI and HUD initiative is very similar to Senator Lee’s HOUSES Act, which would enable states and localities to purchase unused federal land near existing communities — not national parks or other protected areas — for the purpose of building single-family homes to alleviate the housing crisis,” a spokesperson for Lee told the DCNF. “Senator Lee is looking forward to working with the Trump administration to tackle this important issue together.”
Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has also worked alongside Turner on housing policy through the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act introduced in the fall of 2024. The bill aims to reform all sectors of the housing market, help increase the supply of affordable housing, and improve quality of life for families by providing economic opportunity in communities across the nation– goals shared by Turner and the Joint Task Force on Federal Land for Housing.
“Homeownership is key to the American Dream, which is why I’ve continued to work on solutions to put more Americans on the path towards homeownership,” Scott said in a statement shared with the DCNF. “The Joint Task Force on Federal Land for Housing will be critical in our efforts to boost the supply of affordable housing, and I look forward to working with both Secretary Turner and Secretary Burgum to enact policies that advance our shared goal of cutting red tape and ensuring federal housing programs work for the American people.”
“It is our desire that we can build as many homes as possible — quality living spaces of all kinds for the American people,” Turner told the DCNF in January. A representative for Turner went on to say, “He is the person we need to reform failed federal housing policies, cut red tape, and find innovative solutions to expand access to quality, affordable housing.”
When reached for comment by the DCNF, a spokesperson for HUD stated they were unable to provide further details on the task force at this time. The Department of Interior did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
