[delichon]

  Nearly 40% of the United States is public land, supported by taxpayers and managed by federal, state, or local governments. -- https://headwaterseconomics.org/public-lands/protected-lands/public-land-ownership-in-the-us/

Allocating a few more percentage points of that for housing could have a large effect on prices.

[theoreticalmal]

Probably any land the federal government would be okay selling to developers is also land that no developers would have the capital or physical ability to improve to the point of being valuable. Most of Nevada is federal land. Almost no one wants to live on it.

[sroussey]

The major of Los Vegas says otherwise.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/commentary-government-...

[kjkjadksj]

The federal land is not necessarily where the jobs are. Its stuff like remote gun ranges or national parks. Unless you are considering VA hospital and federal cemetery land.

[warkdarrior]

Yes, and nobody wants to live there.

[delichon]

Look at a digital U.S. map with a private / public land overlay and zoom in on the satellite images. It quickly becomes clear that people will live wherever they are allowed to. Sometimes the population stays low and sometimes bare desert turns into the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

[jjav]

> It quickly becomes clear that people will live wherever they are allowed to.

Doesn't seem to be true. You can buy land in e.g. Nevada for less than $1000 per acre, but it sits empty because approximately nobody wants to live in the middle of the desert.