ProPublica

That's the same Utah senator who said he will trade freedom for prosperity every time. Never trust Mike Lee.

'Affordable housing' is the bullshit reasoning they'll use to try and get folks to agree, and then actually build more expensive housing (or pillage the land for natural resources like lumber). The good old bait and switch.

From the article there's a program in Nevada that has built very little affordable housing.

But it’s challenging to build affordable housing on public land for a host of reasons, among them the high cost of infrastructure such as water pipelines and the cumbersome bureaucratic processes involving land agencies.

But a primary obstacle is the price of that land itself: When it’s sold at market rate, it’s extremely difficult for developers to create affordable homes.

There’s just one prominent test case, in Nevada, where a 1998 law enables the sale of federal land at market rate in the Las Vegas Valley and at steeply discounted prices throughout the state if it’s to be used for affordable housing.

Though municipalities can buy BLM land at $100 per acre to create affordable housing, the law has so far created just about 850 affordable units on 30 acres of land. By contrast, the law’s market-value mechanism has enabled the sale of more than 17,000 acres of land at an average of more than $200,000 per acre.

In March, the BLM sold 42 acres for $16.6 million. Meanwhile, according to a recent analysis, rents in Clark and Washoe counties have respectively risen by 56% and 47% since 2018.