LETTER: When it comes to housing, land isn’t the problem

Developers and the politicians they support claim what is needed to make housing more affordable in Nevada is 23,000 acres more of BLM land. That ignores the facts.

House sales are declining. There is no shortage of supply. Cost is the problem. While it easy to blame outside forces such as a lack of land, pandemic supply chain issues (that have been fixed by now), tariffs and corporations buying up homes, the truth lies elsewhere.

There is no shortage of land for housing. A few months ago the Review-Journal published a study that pointed out there are still 23,000 acres of buildable land available within Las Vegas Valley. But those lots are not always the huge contiguous acreage developers favor.

There are two main problems causing the lack of affordable housing. To maximize profits developers are building expensive houses that are unaffordable. Also, there are a shortage of apartments for rent and condos that provide low-cost home ownership. The second main issue is mortgage interest rates. The Fed sets interest rates to quell inflation. One-third of lingering inflation is still driven by President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress pumping $3.2 trillion into a recovering economy to fund their liberal wish list of programs that had nothing to do with pandemic recovery.