EDITORIAL: Another reason to give Nevada back its land

Las Vegas is often called the Ninth Island, as an acknowledgment of the connection between the city and Hawaii. There’s another reason the name fits.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Enterprise Institute released a report this month on how to increase new home construction. That’s a significant concern in Southern Nevada. In August, the median price for a previously owned home was $480,000. And that’s slightly down from the record high set earlier this year.

A new study from UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate offered some details on high housing costs. It found that buyers needed to make more than $57 an hour to afford the monthly payment on a median-priced home. Households with two income earners need each individual to make an average of $28.61 an hour. Little wonder that so many young professionals and newly married couples feel like homeownership is a fantasy. A continued lack of affordable housing will hurt economic growth.

There are many factors in this equation, including interest rates. But the need to increase supply should be obvious. In many places, a lack of land is an obvious barrier. Think about Hawaii. Its eight major islands are surrounded by water. It’s a tropical paradise where land is in limited supply.

Developable land in Las Vegas is also limited. Last year, a report estimated that Las Vegas could run out of real estate for new housing within eight years. This scarcity of land will push prices higher, but unlike Hawaii, there isn’t a drop of ocean water in sight.

A map included in the report from the Chamber and AEI explains the paradox. It features an aerial view of Las Vegas with the surrounding federal land colored in. Suddenly, the Las Vegas metro area looks quite like an island. “Like many metros in the West, Las Vegas’s growth is constrained by federal land,” the report notes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The federal government has long strangled Nevada’s development by owning substantially more of its land than any other state in the union, when measured as a percentage. So much for Nevada being admitted on an equal footing with her fellow states.

In Clark County alone, the federal government controls more than 2.6 million acres of land, much of it near urban areas. This report estimates that Southern Nevada needs around 60,000 new homes. If the federal government released even 10 percent of that land — and none of it would be environmentally sensitive — there would be enough room to build for years to come, infrastructure concerns not withstanding.

The Trump administration has talked about releasing more federal land for housing development. Those efforts should start in Las Vegas.