The 2024 Truckee Meadows Public Lands Management Act is a paradox. By protecting more wild and open space, and giving more land back to area Tribes and less to developers, it is a vast improvement over the awful versions of 2018 and 2020 . Unfortunately, it still falls short in several key areas related to sprawl, climate change and affordable housing that make it impossible for this fifth-generation Washoe County resident to support.
The opening language of the bill saying that it will “promote sustainable growth” is disingenuous. Reno is the fastest-warming city in the U.S. How do we grow not only in a sustainable way, but in a “heat-smart” way? Selling off 16,000 acres of public lands for more suburban sprawl is not the answer. More dense growth, more bikes, more public transit, and fewer cars are required — not spreading suburbs and highways over more of our high desert.
Developers and public officials say the solution to our region’s affordable housing crisis is to trust the free market and just build more homes. They don’t want to talk about the real barriers like medieval levels of economic inequality that keep those struggling to get by from having a decent place to live. And they look upon us skeptics as heretics, refusing to acknowledge that, as economists have pointed out, “building more is not a panacea on its own. In fact, it can make the crisis worse without strong policies designed to help low-income people stay in affordable housing.”