Gov. Joe Lombardo and U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei have taken direct aim at the Bureau of Land Management’s vast control of the Las Vegas Valley regarding the housing crisis.
By Patrick Blennerhassett, Las Vegas Review-Journal, May 12, 2025
Two Republican Nevada politicians are zeroing in on the Bureau of Land Management’s vast control of the land in the Las Vegas Valley as a potential way to alleviate the area’s housing crisis.
The federally run BLM controls approximately 85 percent of the land in the valley, and Gov. Joe Lombardo said a lack of land to develop affordable housing is a top issue as housing prices sit at record highs while inventory continues to flood the market with no buyers in sight.
“The release of federal land for housing would tremendously benefit our state,” said the Republican governor. “The housing crisis in Las Vegas has been exacerbated by rapid population and employment growth, increased home prices, high borrowing rates, and ultimately, a lack of land available for development.”
Lombardo has made two key moves in 2025 toward tackling the housing crisis, most recently signing a data sharing agreement via a memorandum of understanding with the BLM to help identify land that is available for disposal in Nevada. He also recently introduced the Nevada Housing Access and Attainability Act, which would put forward $250 million in state resources to support more than $1 billion in housing through grants, loans and rebates.
U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., led the charge recently to approve a reconciliation bill that included a last-minute amendment to sell off more than 93,000 acres of public lands in Nevada, including 65,129 acres in Clark County and 15,860 acres in Washoe County. The land is earmarked for affordable housing. He said the measure looks to expedite the process of accessing local land for development given traditional land bills have been “phenomenally” hard to pass dating back more than a decade.
Amodei said the amendment keeps money in the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (approximately $1.8 billion) but the money generated by the sale of the 65,000 acres of public land in Clark County would go to the federal government. Multiple Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., U.S. Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., and U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. have publicly opposed the move.
Simply supply and demand?
Accessing the valley’s federally controlled land should be the top priority in solving the local housing crisis, said Mike Ford, a former longtime BLM employee and member of the Nevada Governor’s Housing Policy Working Group. Ford said since the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act was passed in 1998, with the purpose of specifically offloading federally controlled land in the area, has only released 17,519 acres.
The Las Vegas Valley is approximately 2.1 million acres, and Ford added even though the BLM has only offloaded a tiny fraction, they have made a lot of money in the process, $3.6 billion, which works out to about $205,000 an acre, and the most recent auction held by the BLM had an acre going for $400,000.
“The answer is this is a simple supply and demand issue. You don’t have to have a Ph.D in economics to understand this,” he said. “Ninety percent of the land in Clark County is owned by the federal government and they are the only federal agency that really matters when we talk about releasing land for future development or economic development or affordable housing, the only thing that matters is the BLM.”
Jon Raby, the Nevada state director for the BLM, didn’t respond to requests for comment or answer emailed questions. The Review-Journal asked Raby why only 17,519 acres have been offloaded since 1998.
Ford said this is the million-dollar question around the housing crisis. Ford was the deputy director of the state BLM when the act passed and said it’s “maddening” to see how unhelpful its been all these years later.
“You can read the plain language in the act, it directs the Bureau of Land Management to get out of the urban land management business in Clark County,” he said.
Tina Frias, chief executive officer for the Southern Nevada Home Builders Association, echoed Ford’s frustration and said the simple reality is private homebuilders need timely access to affordable land to help build more homes to alleviate the housing crisis in the valley, however the federal government is clearly not listening or acting toward this goal.
“The rate in which federal land has been disposed of over more than two decades is simply not keeping pace with the housing and commercial demands of a region growing as fast as Southern Nevada,” she said. “Limited land availability is a major driving factor in our housing supply shortage and rising home prices. Acreage is not the only problem, however, access is equally as important. Additional land within the disposal boundary will not have a meaningful effect on our housing supply shortage if the federal process does not operate efficiently or reflect localized needs.”
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at [email protected].