Updated Feb. 24 | Housing in the picturesque American West has been in ever-greater demand in recent years as an increasing number of people have migrated away from busy cities to more remote and rural areas. Take Bozeman, Montana, for instance, located near Yellowstone National Park and popular ski resorts. The city’s population has increased by 50 percent between 2010 and 2022, making it one of the fastest growing communities in the United States.
It’s not surprising for Americans to seek out places to live with better access to the great outdoors. After all, living in harmony with nature brings with it increased quality of life. But a lot of this migration has been driven by people who can afford significant expanses of land or homes at above-market prices.
Many of these new residents have purchased second homes or properties they can rent out to tourists as short-term rentals. And many people who have migrated West are remote workers who earn significantly higher city wages than their new neighbors. These trends exacerbate the pressures that were already facing local housing markets and worsen a real and growing affordable housing crisis.
Take a look at the average price of a home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which today is up to more than $1 million. Six years ago, the average price of home in the city was $580,000.
The changes over the years have left many working families struggling even harder to find housing in communities that were already becoming more unaffordable before the pandemic began. For instance, people who work at ski resorts in Colorado, many of whom earn less than $20 an hour, have a difficult time finding housing they could afford in the area, and they must stay in (often limited) housing provided by the resort.
As a longtime advocate for homeless people and a former developer of affordable housing, and the current leader of a New Mexico-based conservation organization, I have learned that there are many reasons why we find ourselves millions of housing units short of where we need to be, particularly for families with the lowest incomes in Western communities.
Local obstacles I’ve encountered include overly restrictive zoning, density limitations, NIMBYism, and onerous permitting processes—all of which deserve attention from our leaders in government at every level. But the most significant challenge to increasing the supply of affordable housing is access to financing and other capital investments.
Healthy, sustainable development considers walkability and access to mass transit, and looks for areas that are close to jobs, services, and community amenities. Builders look to sites with existing infrastructure and utilities, the absence of which makes development much more costly.
One of the ironies of creating affordable housing in the West, home to some of the most desirable places in the country to live, is that most of the land is unsuitable for such development because it’s far from urban centers, making it financially impractical for residential construction.
But I believe federally managed public lands are one important tool, amongst many others, for tackling affordable housing challenges in the West without jeopardizing the quality of life they create for working families. The United States currently owns more than 650 million acres of public lands—areas like parks, wildlife refuges, and unappropriated land—and it has the authority to sell or lease limited parcels for the good of the public using clear criteria that protects American taxpayers and public lands users.
There are tools currently in place to achieve a balance between the quality of life provided by these lands and the needs of the public. The Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service have the power to prioritize parcels of land that are appropriate for real estate development, while conserving others that maintain the way of life people have enjoyed for generations.
The Bureau of Land Management recently exercised its existing authority to bring much-needed housing to the fast-growing Las Vegas area, following a transparent period of public comment. In late 2024, 20 acres of public land was sold to Clark County, which will use the land to develop more than 200 single-family homes for households that earn $70,000 or less each year.
Thanks to the recently passed EXPLORE Act, the Forest Service now has the ability to lease land for affordable housing. In fast-growing Summit County, Colorado, home to a number of ski resorts, the county government recently achieved an agreement with the Forest Service to lease land to create 162 income-based rental units through a trial program that the Act codified into law.
Millions of acres of American public lands are openly accessible to everyone at every income level, which makes public land one of the great institutions of our democracy. Though these lands are sources of national pride—from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone—they are special most of all to the people who are lucky enough to share them as a backyard.
Unfortunately, a campaign is underway to end public ownership of public lands. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently brought a lawsuit directly to the U.S. Supreme Court that calls on the federal government to “dispose” of public lands, in which he is joined by the state’s entire congressional delegation. Their suit does not specify how the lands would be disposed of nor who would assume control of them if they succeeded. I believe it could easily result in large-scale purchases of lands by entities completely uninterested in affordable housing.
[RELATED ARTICLE: Western States Look to These Lands for New Affordable Housing]
Although that effort failed, Utah has stated its determination to continue the effort, including refiling the suit in a lower court. That suit is coupled with Congressional actions, such as a bill introduced by Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) that provides no explicit guarantees to create affordable housing on public land, but plenty of pathways to sell that land to private developers, and even a budgetary rule change that would count public lands as having no value when they are sold by the federal government.
Those campaigns put in jeopardy the very reasons why communities in the West are such great places to live. A vast sell-off of public lands would benefit wealthy developers and so-called “hobby ranchers,” not the Americans who need an affordable place to live, because the ultra-rich are the only ones who could afford to develop lands with such high barriers to construction. Just as we strive to make housing affordable for middle- and lower-income families, we should protect their access to the great outdoors.
The West is a desirable place to live in large part because of its proximity to world-class hunting, fishing, skiing, camping, and more. Let’s continue to make sure these opportunities remain available to everyone at every level of income. That means creating more affordable housing through regulatory reform and increased investment and keeping public lands in public hands.
Correction: The U.S. owns and manages about 650 million acres of land, not less as we previously indicated. This article has been updated.
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Preservation of existing units, especially in rural areas, is an option developers should consider. Land set aside for wilderness, wildlife, and water should be preserved and protected at all costs-haven’t humans done enough sprawl?
Ultimately, given the fevor of our hard right authoritarian rule, this article feels naive at best. More likely key lands will be sold to those the currnet administration favors to exploit for mining, tourism and other profit making eneterprize.
Haha that is hilarious that you think public land transfer would go to help middle class families. Very little land that has been privately held has gone to affordable housing projects. If the federal government loses public land and transfers it to the states they will auction it off to the highest bidder and it will just become more mountain palaces and playgrounds for the rich. Open your eyes and stop advocating for the plunder of what is left of our precious natural resources.