I live in the West and have spent a lot of time on BLM land and in rural parts of Utah. The housing argument seems specious to me. BLM land is often on the extreme end of rural. A lot of it is uninhabitable - no utilities, no buildable acreage, no jobs nearby, very limited accessibility.
I don’t see it as a good faith argument, but open to be corrected.
> did a property developer lobby for this?
Maybe not a real one but…surely there’s a way this is a scam, right? Could this be feasible: “we bought all this land for houses but oops did some market research and found out <no one would live here/it’s too far away/etc>, guess we’ll have to sell it to someone who can strip it for resources. Sorrrry teehee”
- the housing crisis isn't about a lack of land to build on really
- there's a decent amount of vacant housing, but it's not meeting people's needs if it's far from jobs, schools, food, healthcare, or if it financially doesn't make sense
- especially in the western states where most of the BLM land is, building more housing surrounded by/abutting wild land creates/exacerbates fire risks, which perhaps makes new housing expensive or impossible to insure, etc.
So even setting aside the environmental or even ethical objections to this (did a property developer lobby for this?), it just seems like a bad way to accomplish their stated goals.