The Departments of the Interior and Housing and Urban Development are exploring making some federal land available for homebuilding to alleviate a stubborn housing shortage estimated at over 20 million homes . Their success will depend not only on how quickly and broadly the plan is implemented, but on making sure any newly opened land is not bogged down by the local land use regulations that make housing so scarce and expensive in the first place.
The current home shortage is primarily due to excessively restrictive local land-use rules that favor relatively expensive homes on large lots. But particularly in western states, land for homebuilding is limited by federal holdings near fast-growing metropolitan areas like Las Vegas, Phoenix and many others.
Western land was opened to large-scale settlement through 1862’s Homestead Act , which resulted in the sale of more than 420,000 square miles — around 11 percent of the country — in blocks of up to 160 acres, typically to small farmers. As quality agricultural land grew scarce, claims plummeted and nearly dried up by the 1930s…