Yes, sell some federal land. But that won’t help much on housing.

Yes, sell some federal land. But that won’t help much on housing.

At 640 million acres, over a quarter of America’s total land area, the federal government’s real estate portfolio dwarfs that of private developers and corporations. The U.S. federal government owns more land than France, Spain and Germany combined. When some in Congress recently proposed selling a small amount of federal land to build affordable housing, the idea met fierce bipartisan resistance and was dropped. The barriers to building housing…