source: @SecretaryTurner on X

HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Secretary, Scott Turner, and Department of the Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum formed a task force, linked to the DOGE agenda. This task force would identify underutilized federal lands to sell off or use for affordable housing. HUD Secretary Turner posted a video on YouTube, saying “We need more affordable homes in America, about seven million to be exact.” The Department of the Interior oversees over 500 million acres of federal land which is about 20% of the Nation’s land.

source: @SinklarD on X

Assuming that the National Parks are off-limits, that leaves mostly BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land, most of which is in Nevada and Utah. The GOP’s proposal to open up BLM land in Nevada for development will just create more unsustainable sprawl. This would be a boon for real estate speculators but these properties could end up foreclosed on, like the 2008 financial crisis, or become uninhabitable due to water scarcity and climate change. The Las Vegas metro needs to urbanize and build up the areas alongside the Strip, as well as infill development within existing suburbs. The BLM land in California is mostly in the Mojave Desert or remote mountain areas which are not suitable for development. I don’t want to see more Hesperias and Palmdales get built in California.

Federally Owned Land (yellow= BLM land holdings)

source: wikipedia.org

In The Wall Street Journal, Secretaries Turner and Burgum, wrote “This is about more than building houses. We want to build hope. Overlooked rural and tribal communities will be a focus of this joint agreement. We are going to invest in America’s many forgotten communities.” While revitalizing forgotten rural communities is noble, there is actually not a shortage of housing in these more affordable forgotten communities, but rather a great shortage in desirable areas with high-paying jobs. For instance, there are homes for as cheap as 20-30k in Little Rock, Arkansas. Opening up BLM land in Nevada would also create more undesirable ghettos.

source: @Empty_America on X

The Trump administration should focus on selling off underutilized federal properties that are in or adjacent to major metropolitan areas with high housing costs and high-paying jobs, excluding ecologically sensitive wilderness areas and historic landmarks. This includes many federal buildings in urban cores, which DOGE has targeted. Elon Musk had also talked about selling off the historic and scenic Presidio Trust in San Francisco, which I am strongly against, and it would be a giveaway to Trump and Elon’s buddies in Silicon Valley.

The best candidates for redevelopment are the massive military bases in California, including Camp Pendleton and Coronado Naval Air Station in San Diego County, and Alameda Naval Air Station near Oakland, with Coronado and Alameda ideal for creating new dense urban districts. While I appreciate how Camp Pendleton creates an open space buffer between the LA and San Diego metros, it has so much space that if redeveloped, it could create two or three new compact cities for about 30k residents each with plenty of open space left.

source: @YIMBYLAND on X

The East Bay’s Concord Naval Station redevelopment is a proposed community of 28k residents that has been put on hold due to bureaucracy, issues with unions, and local nimbyism. However, other Bay Area military bases that are in the process of being redeveloped, include Mare Island in Vallejo and Hunters Point in San Francisco. Orange County redeveloped its old El Toro air station into the Orange County Great Park. Regardless, some of these sites need to be cleaned up of hazardous chemicals.

While we need to maintain a certain number of military and naval bases for national security, I asses that California has more than enough bases left over from the Cold War. The problem is that Trump does not want to scale back the military and is probably hesitant to help California and other blue states build more housing and boost their economies.

There is a massive Veterans Administration site near where I grew up on the Westside of LA. At 388 acres, the VA site is about twice the size of Century City (176 acres), which is a major economic hub. The VA is also adjacent to some of the most valuable real estate in Brentwood and Westwood, and a new metro subway station will open there in several years. The current site, which is very underutilized, could fit a second Century City, albeit hopefully more walkable.

I get the argument that the VA site should be totally preserved for veterans but redeveloping the site with a fee on the rents of the luxury apartments, condos, and commercial space, could be used to better fund services for Veterans, which I know sounds neoliberal coded. However, I am still for maintaining existing Veteran services such as the hospital. Trump ordered housing for 6k homeless Veterans at the VA site by 2028, which I approve of, even if there is a slightly performative angle to own the local liberals.

source: @ArmandDoma on X

The selling point for Trump was that he is a builder, and Trump’s campaign planks included creating futuristic freedom cities from scratch and an executive order mandating neoclassical architecture in government buildings. While it will be interesting to see if he follows through on these proposals, he didn’t build much in terms of infrastructure during his first term. Unfortunately, the pro-sprawl position is dominant on the Right as urbanism, walkable communities, and density have become left coded. There is also a lot of nimby sentiment among conservatives including Trump promising to protect single family zoning and suburbia.

source: @aaron_renn on X

source: @jdcmedlock on X

source: @NoLieWithBTC on X

There is a more sinister agenda to loot America’s natural resources and lands which are our commons and birthright, which you can make a nationalist case for. A Twitter/X account @DataRepublican, who is allegedly an advisor for Doge, posted “Strip mine the federal parks to end the national debt.” Even though Musk recently exited the Trump administration, this agenda is still a component of the Trump administration, with Trump planning to open up national forests to logging. One of the great things about California is having access to all the state parks and national forests, while in red states like Montana and Idaho, a lot of the wilderness is siphoned off by ultra-wealthy landowners, which will be the case if Trump sells off the national forests.

source: @HeroVillageNYC on X

A reason to be somewhat optimistic is that Trump’s HUD is overseeing the Hero Village project in Brooklyn. Hero Village plans to house 20k first responders including police, firefighters, and EMTs on the site of a defunct emergency shelter that the federal government used to house migrants. This proposed project has great aesthetics that resemble the turn of the 20th Century New York City Brownstones, compact urbanism, and walkability, and would be connected to Manhattan by subway.

source: @AlecStapp on X

Another reason to be tepidly optimistic about Trump’s housing and land use policies is that Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, was relatively YIMBY as North Dakota Governor and has made statements in favor of urbanism and the desirability of walkable communities. There is an urbanist shift among right-leaning youth, such as the Twitter/X account MAGA YIMBY, which shows that the Left does not have a total monopoly on urbanism. At the very least, the long neglected housing issue is being addressed, even if a lot of the Trump admin’s proposals are short sighted.

source: @MAGA_YIMBY on X