White House announces new actions to repurpose public lands available for affordable housing

Key Takeaways

On July 16, the White House announced new steps to lower housing costs by repurposing underutilized public lands to increase housing supply. The federal government is the largest landholder in the country, and state and county governments, as well as entities like transit agencies, school districts, public utilities, and faith-based institutions, own considerable amounts of land that are underutilized and may be used in ways that better reflect local priorities and housing needs. Highlights of the new actions include: 

• The United States Forest Service (USFS) is announcing plans to lease Forest Service land to build workforce housing.
• The United States Postal Service (USPS) will pilot the repurposing of certain surplus facilities in areas with a housing shortage.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Health and Human Services (HHS) and General Services Administration (GSA) are releasing a final rule to aid public and private developers in securing underutilized federal lands to build housing under the Title V program, authorized by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.
• The Department of Transportation (USDOT) published interim guidance to authorize transit agencies to transfer their land to support transit-oriented development.
• HUD awarded $325 million in Choice Neighborhood grants to revitalize communities across the country through redeveloping distressed housing and neighborhood improvements.

HUD and USDOT both offer technical assistance that can help counties identify and repurpose land they own for housing, and HUD published a best practices guide that includes examples and strategies counties can deploy to repurpose their land for housing. NACo will continue to monitor for new resources and actions that counties can take to repurpose land and increase housing affordability in their communities.