Friday, Feb. 14, 2025 | 3:40 p.m.
Susie Lee and Catherine Cortez Masto stood on a gravel-filled vacant lot in northwest Las Vegas Friday morning with a promise: In a few years, this once federally owned land will host around 3,000 homes.
Lawmakers and developers say they are expanding efforts to untap some of the federally owned acres that account for over 80% of the state’s total land for housing. The effort is vital to address the housing crunch of availability and affordability that’s plaguing Southern Nevada.
However, securing appraisals and permits to build on the land is a lengthy process — something U.S. Rep. Lee, D-Las Vegas, and U.S. Sen. Cortez Masto, D-Nev., say they are working for solutions to cut through those “bureaucratic barriers.”
They say part of that fix can be found in their Accelerating Appraisals and Conservation Efforts Act — or the AACE Act.
The law, one of the final pieces of legislation signed by former President Joe Biden, relaxes Department of Interior requirements in appraising and valuing real property for transactions the department has jurisdiction over — like federal land that’s ripe for new housing development.
“It’s not just for housing, it’s for infrastructure and for conservation,” Lee said. “It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s certainly a commonsense way to cut government red tape and speed up home building.”
Skye Summit, a community near Centennial Hills, is among several housing projects developed by Olympia Companies on land previously held by the federal government. Construction is expected to begin at the end of this year on 500 acres of land; the group also worked on development for the Skye Canyon and Southern Highland communities.
Building any kind of housing is a step in the right direction for affordable housing, said Maurice Page, the executive director of the Nevada Housing Coalition. The cost of a home in Skye Canyon starts in the $300,000s.
“The issue that we’re having in Nevada is not just the fact that we’re lacking affordable housing,” Page said. “We’re lacking housing in general. And so, it’s a multipronged issue that we’re facing overall.”
In January, the median price of existing single-family homes sold in Southern Nevada reached a record high of $485,000, according to data from the trade group Las Vegas Realtors.
Opening federal land is one solution, but “typically there’s just simply not enough land being released on a regular basis,” said Chris Armstrong, the executive vice president of Olympia Companies.
As many developers and elected officials have identified opening federal land, there are 4.53 million acres of federal land in Clark County administered by the federal government, the bulk of which is administered by the Bureau of Land Management, according to the county website.
The Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act allows BLM to sell public land around the Las Vegas valley and use the revenue to fund some conservation projects. State or local governments can submit requests to “reserve” land towards intended affordable housing developments within the act disposal boundary for up to 10 years.
There were 30 acres of land reserved in Henderson; 15 acres in Las Vegas; 430 acres total in Clark County, according to BLM data from last June.
Cortez Masto said her Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, commonly referred to as the Clark County Lands Bill, will be reintroduced this session. The legislation pitched setting aside over 2 million acres of federally owned land in the county for habitat conservation, outdoor recreation and cultural and landscape preservation, and would also allow for development of more affordable housing.
“It also brings money back to Southern Nevada, and I can’t say this enough, to support wildfire prevention efforts, to protect endangered species, to deliver water to our communities and build more parks and trails,” Cortez Masto said.
Tina Frias, CEO of the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, said it’s not a current concern that purchasing and developing federal lands will require nearby residents to move to a region with even more land available.
“There’s still land that’s close enough within the Las Vegas valley, and so I think the goal is, as we expand more land, it’s still just going to give more access in and out of the Las Vegas community,” Frias said. “I don’t think it necessarily means that they have to relocate to some place further out.”
Cortez Masto said the effort to open federal land needs to include the private sector, the state legislature and Gov. Joe Lombardo, who cited the root cause of housing issues in the state as families and builders “being held back by the federal government’s reluctance to release the land we need for housing,” in his State of the State address last month.
In that address, Lombardo said he had spoken to President Donald Trump on multiple occasions and stressed the importance of releasing the land.
On Monday, the governor sent a letter to state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, and shared a draft resolution urging systematic federal land release in Nevada.
“I have continued to engage with our federal delegation and the President on this issue, and I am seeking your support to advocate for the immediate and systematic release of federal land in Nevada,” Lombardo wrote to the state legislators in the letter.
Lee said she is calling upon Lombardo to send a letter with the same asks to the Trump administration.
“I ask the governor not just send a letter to Democrats but send a letter to Republicans and to the Trump administration,” Lee said. “…. We’re for government efficiency for sure, but when you walk in and basically obliterate departments from the get-go, it’s not the most effective nor is it the most efficient way to achieve government efficiency.”