EMPTY FEDERAL LAND COULD HELP ON HOUSING

On Monday, the Legislature wrapped up its nearly unanimous passage of a bill that could allow religious centers to become a major new source of affordable housing by letting them build shelter on their parking lots and other available parcels without approvals from local agencies. When, as is widely expected, Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bill, it will make available up to 170,000 acres of land for housing on property owned by churches, synagogues, mosques and other faith institutions.

This is one more sign of how far the Legislature has come since 2017. Until then, few thought it was realistic for the state to be able to limit local governments’ ability to block housing because of environmentalists’ objections to streamlining rules and NIMBYs’ resistance to changes in their communities. Yet since then, such new laws on housing have been enacted every year.

But while it’s too soon to know if these laws will eventually bring down the extreme cost of housing in California, it’s not too early to note that early results have been modest at best. This is why it’s time for Newsom and the Legislature to think big on another key housing issue: the cost of land. Its extremes in the Golden State are partly why in 2022 the state had the second-highest average property cost per square foot (after Hawaii) as well as the second smallest lot size (after Nevada), according to a recent analysis. And in California, by far the largest landowner is the federal government. Its 47.8 million acres of land are nearly 300 times the size of the parcels potentially available under the bill before Newsom. At least half of that land would immediately be considered untouchable — home to national parks, military bases and pristine forests — or unsuitable for housing because of its distance from populated areas. But there is promise in the 15 million acres held by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. A study published last year by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee at the behest of Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee suggests that selling large chunks of such holdings could make a profound difference in housing availability and affordability in 12 Western states, including California — and potentially in San Diego County, where 39 percent of land is owned by the federal government, per a county fact sheet. Lee has introduced a bill that would allow local governments to buy federal land in return for binding commitments to build housing projects that meet density minimums.

The idea that freeing up federal land in response to domestic needs is far-fetched and improbable is undercut by what happened after Congress passed the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act in 1998. At the program’s peak in its first four years, nearly 10,000 acres in Bureau of Land Management holdings were conveyed or sold to local and state government agencies and to private entities for a variety of uses in the booming Las Vegas metro area. This was a specific, focused example of a broader trend: From 1990 to 2018, according to a congressional report, the federal government gave up 31.5 million acres — 5 percent of its holdings. While this was primarily BLM land in remote stretches of Alaska and shuttered Pentagon bases across the nation, the report showed that federal land holdings are more fluid than many will assume.

Many state leaders have long said the housing crisis is so severe it must be addressed on several fronts. Now that local control of approvals is declining as a major obstacle, it’s time to address what should be recognized as a similar impediment: federal control of buildable land. Freeing up even 100,000 acres of little-used federal land for housing could be the sort of policy game-changer Californians desperately need. And for all its seeming boldness, this is the sort of initiative that can be pursued with little serious risk if it comes with the safeguards seen in Lee’s bill and in the law reducing the federal footprint in the Las Vegas area. Attention, Gavin Newsom, Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla: Lee’s office can be reached at (202) 224-5444.