On a bright spring day, Tamara Pogue walked through an empty lot in Dillon, Colo. Snow still draped the peaks behind the mountain town.
“It's got some cement pads, it's got some dirt — a lot of dirt,” said Pogue, a Summit County Commissioner.
The nondescript lot is owned by the federal government and sits just above town center.
“I think when folks think about U.S. Forest Service land, they think about the pristine wilderness that we see across the reservoir,” she said.
This property, on the other hand, was an administrative site for the White River National Forest. The Forest Service used it to store equipment, and some employees lived there.
Now, in a first-of-its-kind deal, the Forest Service is leasing the land to the county for a new affordable housing project. Plans call for three buildings with about 160 rental units for local workers, including some reserved for Forest Service employees.
Summit County, home to ski resorts like Breckenridge and Keystone, is surrounded by national forest land, which limits growth. Pogue said housing has always been tight but got worse during the pandemic.
“We have neighborhoods in Summit County that were traditionally owned by working locals that literally flipped to second homeowners, seemingly overnight,” she said.
Federal officials are looking for more opportunities to build on land managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to address the housing crisis across the West.
In March, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner announced a joint task force to identify suitable parcels. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wants to go further. He’s pushing a proposal, tucked into a federal budget bill, to sell off roughly two to three million acres of federal land.
“We’re opening underused federal land to expand housing, support local development and get Washington D.C. out of the way of communities that are just trying to grow,” Lee said in a video announcement showing a car zooming through a dusty desert. He argued the federal government owns too much land – about a third of the U.S.
Pogue said Lee's proposal lacks safeguards to ensure it leads to affordable housing and that appropriate land is chosen.
“People come to Summit County because of all of that federal land,” she said. “You need to be very careful in this conversation that you're really looking for parcels that are kind of within that urban footprint, and not outside in the backcountry.”
The Dillon lease was made possible by a provision in the 2018 Farm Bill during the Biden Administration, which allows small administrative sites to be leased. Lee’s proposal, by contrast, mandates the sale of vast tracts of land.
“I think it’s fair to say that this proposal goes far beyond the limited scope we’ve utilized and advocated for in the past,” Pogue said.
Under Lee’s plan, state or local governments would get the first opportunity to buy the land, but they could be outbid by private developers. 90% of the revenue would go to the U.S. Treasury, not local communities.
These details don't concern Ed Lawson, the mayor of Sparks, Nev., which sits next to Reno.
“I need the land more so than I need the proceeds from the sales,” he said, advocating for the proposal.
More high-paid workers are moving into the area to fill a growing tech industry. That's driving up home prices in Sparks. The city sits next to BLM land.
“We might as well be on an island,” Lawson said. “We can't really grow much bigger than what we are.”
He wants to use federal land not only for housing but also to expand commercial space and the tax base. However, it’s unclear whether that kind of development would be allowed under an updated draft of Lee’s bill, which appears limited to housing or “any associated infrastructure to support local housing needs.”
Lee didn’t respond to questions from the Mountain West News Bureau. In an interview with conservative talk host Glenn Beck, he pushed back on what he called "falsehoods" spread about the proposal. He said it would prioritize building near existing communities.
Michael Carroll with the Wilderness Society warns that while the bill excludes national parks and other federally-protected lands, it still leaves sensitive and treasured areas — including trail systems and popular recreation zones close to towns — open to sale.
“Areas where we hike and take our dogs and spend time snowshoeing and mountain biking all year round,” said Carroll, who believes other eligible lands are too remote for housing construction.
Maurice Page, who runs the Nevada Housing Coalition, is skeptical that Lee's proposal will result in affordable housing.
“I have sincere doubts,” he said.
Page supports small-scale land transfers as a tool that can help with housing availability. This has worked through a longstanding program with the BLM in Las Vegas, he said. Last year, the agency sold a 20-acre parcel in an urban area to Clark County below fair market value, which will result in the construction of more than 200 units for low- to moderate-income first-time homebuyers.
But Page said there’s nothing in Lee’s plan that requires any new housing to be affordable.
“If you're giving away our land and only creating luxury or market rate housing, you're not giving an opportunity for others to grow,” he said.
Plus, access to land is often just the first hurdle. In Summit County, nearly two years after the Forest Service lease was signed, building on the Dillon housing project has yet to begin. The county is still working through agency agreements for the project and is evaluating funding sources amid high interest rates and rising construction costs.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by CPB.
