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Harris and Trump see federal land in the Southwest as an opportunity for more housing

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Picture the American Southwest - sweeping vistas, imposing buttes jutting up from the desert floor, rivers cutting through the landscape. Well, a lot of this land is federally owned and maintained, and both major presidential candidates see it as an opportunity to build more housing. The idea is attractive to some officials in swing states like Arizona and Nevada. NPR's Ben Giles reports for our election series We, The Voters.

SHAPIRO: Picture the American Southwest - sweeping vistas, imposing buttes jutting up from the desert floor, rivers cutting through the landscape. Well, a lot of this land is federally owned and maintained, and both major presidential candidates see it as an opportunity to build more housing. The idea is attractive to some officials in swing states like Arizona and Nevada. NPR's Ben Giles reports for our election series We, The Voters.

BEN GILES, BYLINE: Everyone from housing advocates to homebuilders are thrilled that the cost of rent and a mortgage is part of the campaign conversation on the national stage this fall.

BRETT THEODOS: We're reaching a rare moment of some messaging alignment between the campaigns.

GILES: Brett Theodos is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

THEODOS: That's not to say they're all aligned on the details of their proposed solutions. But I think there's broader recognition than there's been in years past that high housing costs are a problem both on the ownership side and on the rental side.

GILES: While the candidates have differing opinions on how to make housing more affordable, Harris and Trump both recognize the opportunity presented by federal land, of which there is much in the arid Southwest climate - nearly 40% of Arizona, roughly 80% in Nevada. Trump has been more vocal about the idea. He recently raised the issue at a rally in Tucson, Arizona.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: You great people in this state that are asking me so many times - so many people are asking me to do this. We will open up new tracks of federal land for large-scale housing construction so that we can get housing on the market.

GILES: That's music to the ears of Spencer Kamps with the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.

SPENCER KAMPS: Anything that can be done to relieve those housing prices, those high housing prices we're seeing in Arizona, would be a great step in the right direction.

GILES: Kamps acknowledges there are challenges. While it might seem appealing to have a home with views of the sweeping vistas of the Southwest, actually building on that land can be costly. As Kamps put it, anything with a slope above 15 degrees is unbuildable. Still, he says, there are options in Central Arizona, which includes the Phoenix Metro area.

KAMPS: There's a lot of flat, very flat lands that could be potential candidates for homes or for sale through this concept.

GILES: That doesn't mean the land that could be built on is actually attractive to develop, Theodos says.

THEODOS: The value of land is really the value of proximity to things that people want.

GILES: That's things like jobs, churches and transit options, which are harder to find on the outskirts of places like the Phoenix Metro region.

THEODOS: It is rare when we think about total number of square miles. But there are still a lot of properties that have at least some proximity and some market value.

GILES: The Biden administration identified one such place, 20 acres of Bureau of Land Management land near Las Vegas. Under a proposed deal, Clark County would buy the land at below fair market value to build affordable housing. It's the kind of project that Maurice Page with the Nevada Housing Coalition says could help the region's needs.

MAURICE PAGE: We need roughly about 50 - a little over 50,000 units built to be able to, you know, maintain and keep up with the growth of southern Nevada.

GILES: Similar projects could help rural parts of the Southwest. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there's a shortage of roughly 78,000 affordable rental homes for low-income families throughout Nevada and a shortage of more than 130,000 affordable homes in Arizona.

SHAPIRO: And through the magic of radio, Ben Giles has teleported from Phoenix to here...

SHAPIRO: And through the magic of radio, Ben Giles has teleported from Phoenix to here...

GILES: (Laughter).

SHAPIRO: ...In our studios in Washington, D.C. We heard in your reporting that it might not be feasible to build housing on some areas of land. So would this plan actually alleviate the need for more affordable housing?

SHAPIRO: ...In our studios in Washington, D.C. We heard in your reporting that it might not be feasible to build housing on some areas of land. So would this plan actually alleviate the need for more affordable housing?

GILES: So the thing to remember is while the federal government does own tons of land out West, most of it is not adjacent to areas with the biggest housing needs. That means the overall impact - it would be minimal in markets like Phoenix, where affordability has become a big issue. But it could have a small and meaningful impact in communities where it makes sense. For example, Maurice Page out of Nevada - he sees even greater potential for growth in parts of his state beyond the Las Vegas Valley.

PAGE: I think the realistic idea is if you could, you know, release more land in the rural and Northern Nevada, it would actually help more in that area.

GILES: So he's talking about areas hours away from a major city like Las Vegas, but those rural areas are struggling, too, he says. And he argues we should be doing everything we can to rein in the cost of living everywhere.

SHAPIRO: Is there a conservation concern here? Are some of these federal lands meant to be protected ecosystems?

SHAPIRO: Is there a conservation concern here? Are some of these federal lands meant to be protected ecosystems?

GILES: Sure. And conservationists like Aaron Weiss warn that this whole idea of building homes on federal land is actually being hijacked as something of a Trojan horse by Republicans out West who've long advocated for the federal government to turn over land to states or local governments. Weiss is the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities. He says that once you build on these lands, you're eliminating all the possible ways it's already being used. That could be everything from grazing to all kinds of outdoor recreation that land is now available for, for the general public to use.

Weiss was particularly critical of a bill introduced a few years ago in Congress, the HOUSES Act. That would streamline the process of transferring federal land to state and local governments with the caveat that at least 85% of that transferred land - it would have to be used for residential housing and something called community needs. That's things like schools, churches and grocery stores. But Weiss says there's no requirement in the bill that the housing that's constructed on that land actually be affordable in the market that it's in. And he warned that it would actually allow what he called McMansions to be built on the doorsteps of national parks in places like Arizona. Of course, we haven't even mentioned water at this point...

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

GILES: ...Which is obviously a necessary resource when developing new homes, and it's something that Southwestern states are constantly fighting over access to.

SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Ben Giles with reporting from Arizona and here today in Washington. Thanks, Ben.

SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Ben Giles with reporting from Arizona and here today in Washington. Thanks, Ben.

GILES: Thanks, Ari.

(SOUNDBITE OF J. COLE SONG, "FORBIDDEN FRUIT (FEAT. KENDRICK LAMAR)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Ben Giles