Just east of the St. George city limits, there’s a place where the sprawl ends.
Turning a corner past large, pristine homes with manicured lawns, the black asphalt gives way to red desert.
Given southwest Utah’s rapid growth, it would seem like this neighborhood could easily continue on. However, if you take one more step past the end of the sidewalk, you enter open scrubland controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.
That might not always be the case, though. That’s because the idea of converting public land into housing is having a moment.
U.S. Rep. John Curtis of Utah’s 3rd Congressional District introduced a bill in February to create an avenue for the federal government to sell land to state or local governments to build homes. It’s a companion bill to one that U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah reintroduced in 2023.
The Biden administration announced its own set of actions to open federal land to housing development this summer, including the BLM’s proposed sale of 20 acres near Las Vegas. The White House statement calls on all federal agencies to take stock of “surplus” land to see which parcels might help with housing shortages.
Even locally in southwest Utah, the mayor of Ivins has advocated for developing a piece of nearby state land into affordable housing.
Whichever proposal might end up becoming a reality, Southern Utah Home Builders Association’s Government Affairs Director Stacy Young said the push to include public land in future development seems to be gaining momentum.
Just because Utah has plenty of public land — the federal government manages around 68% of the state — that doesn’t mean it’s all ripe for development.
“The vast majority of federal land in Utah is kind of irrelevant to this discussion. It's not in the path of growth. It doesn't have any sort of intrinsic value for solving housing affordability,” Young said. “It's a very tiny, tiny percentage of federal land that would ever make sense.”
The idea might make more sense in Washington County, he said, because some of the federal land that surrounds St. George and nearby communities is next to existing growth. Places that are adjacent to developed private land could potentially be built on quickly, he said, but spots that are far from roads, sewer and water lines would take a few years to develop, even if the government opened up the land tomorrow.
“It wouldn't make sense, for example, to hopscotch out 20 miles from the edge of anything and say, ‘Oh, let's convert this.’ There's no infrastructure there.”
The nitty gritty process of transforming a piece of public land into homes probably wouldn’t be too different from converting farmland into a neighborhood, Young said, but there would likely be some extra boxes to check related to archeological and environmental impacts.
Even if public land could be developed, it might not help southwest Utah’s affordable housing shortage as much as other changes local governments could make on their own. For example, he said current regulations in much of Washington County make it easier for developers to build million-dollar, single-family homes than build higher-density multifamily units.
“I don't think [developing public land] is a silver bullet by itself. I think we can probably get as much impact from addressing our land use policies,” Young said. “Making that whole system work a little bit more smoothly and flexibly, I think, would have just as much impact as bringing public lands into the equation.”
With the county population projected to nearly double by 2050, more homes will need to be built somewhere. But Judith Rognli, desert livability program manager with the conservation group Conserve Southwest Utah, said that doesn’t mean just any open space should be on the chopping block.
“We're facing this big crisis, and I understand that there is this impetus to jump for those big, seemingly, easy fixes,” Rognli said. “I would caution against that.”
Since most federal land is on the outskirts of town, she said, that inherently means developing it would further increase sprawl. Building new roads into previously undisturbed land could dissect wildlife habitat and create more of a risk for wildfire.
There could also be negative consequences for residents, she said.
If people moving into Washington County have to drive farther to get where they live, that would likely increase traffic and air pollution. If the new homes are located away from transit stops, schools and other places people need to go, that also makes it more expensive for potential homebuyers.
Then there’s the concern that homes built on public land might not end up being affordable.
The median home price in Washington County is $650,000, as of August 2024. The two homes currently listed for sale within a block of that neighborhood street that dead ends into BLM land are going for more than $1 million each. So Rognli said there would need to be guardrails to ensure at least some of the new homes would be sold at an attainable price point based on local median income.
Rognli also cautioned that starting to develop some federal lands might set a troubling precedent that puts more of the desert landscape at risk and removes part of what makes southwest Utah special.
“Our public lands surrounding this community are what brings people here, are what contributes significantly to the economic potential of this region and also to the quality of life in this region.”
A better option, she said, would be to encourage infill development — building new units on land that’s within an existing urban area — and higher-density development closer to existing transportation and shopping. Changing zoning rules that currently favor single-family housing, require parking minimums and don’t allow smaller lot sizes would also help.
There are signs that local leadership is moving in that direction.
The community of Ivins just west of St. George updated its moderate-income housing ordinance earlier this year to allow more multifamily development and make it easier for residents to build accessory dwelling units — a second building on their lot that could be available for rent.
The downtown plan that’s part of St. George’s 2040 vision specifically mentions infill housing and mixed-use development. And market forces have already pushed some southwest Utah developers to move toward townhomes and condominiums, rather than single-family homes.
“It's important to acknowledge that we're facing a major housing affordability crisis everywhere and here,” Rognli said. But “we want housing to be sustainable, accessible and attainable, and that means we need to carefully weigh the pros and cons.”
Read more: Public lands for housing is having a moment with Republicans and Democrats
