President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DOI) and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have announced a taskforce that will study how to tackle the “housing affordability crisis” using federal land.
DOI Secretary Doug Burgum and HUD Secretary Scott Turner made the announcement in a video posted to social media on March 17, revealing that they had signed an agreement to start addressing “our nation’s housing affordability crisis.”
“HUD will work with DOI to assess the housing needs in areas where federal lands may. Available yet underutilized and implement tailored housing programs with guidance from states and localities,” Turner explained.
Burgum then stated: “This partnership will identify underutilized federal lands suitable for residential development and streamline the land transfer process. It will also promote policies to increase the availability of affordable housing while balancing important environmental and land use considerations.”
We need 7 million affordable homes in America and 20% of America’s landmass is owned by the Department of Interior.
Today, @SecretaryBurgum and I are announcing a partnership between @HUDgov & @Interior to identify and open under utilized federal lands for affordable housing. pic.twitter.com/p1EU04Ay7B
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) March 17, 2025
According to Turner, roughly 20% of the United States’ landmass is owned by the federal government, with the majority of that land being in the western half of the country. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is tasked with overseeing the majority of that land.
Experts say that the DOI and HUD’s housing plan would most likely be focused on federal lands that surround major cities, such as Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; and Salt Lake City, Utah. According to a preliminary analysis from the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, building housing developments on 512,000 out of the roughly 640 million acres of land owned by the federal government could result in three to four million new homes being built.
If this effort to build millions of new homes succeeds, it would be one of the largest housing efforts in U.S. history. However, attempts to do similar projects in the past failed, as there were a lot of disagreements on the issue between various levels of government.
Burgum and Turner also detailed their plans in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal on March 16.
“HUD will pinpoint where housing needs are most pressing and guide the process by working with state and local leaders who know their communities best. Interior will identify locations that can support homes while carefully considering environmental impact and land-use restrictions,” they wrote.
“Streamlining the regulatory process is a cornerstone of this partnership. Historically, building on federal land is a nightmare of red tape—lengthy environmental reviews, complex transfer protocols and disjointed agency priorities. This partnership will cut through the bureaucracy,” they added. “This isn’t a free-for-all to build on federal lands, although we recognize that bad-faith critics will likely call it that. It’s a strategic effort to use our resources responsibly while preserving our most beautiful lands.”
Turner also recently appeared on Fox Business Channel to discuss the housing affordability crisis, where he argued that burdensome regulations from former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden also contributed to Americans being unable to find housing:
.@SecretaryTurner: There’s a housing affordability crisis in our country and a big part of that is burdensome regulations like the Biden-Obama AFFH rule.
We tore down the AFFH “zoning tax” to restore power back to localities and save our suburban neighborhoods across America. pic.twitter.com/1gOxwDPK2b
— Department of Housing and Urban Development (@HUDgov) March 11, 2025
