“All your land are belong to us”. And we’re not selling . . .

Photo above - There are 1,696 vacant public-school buildings in America. (2023 data). If you lived here, you'd be home now. And probably within walking distance of shopping. Why aren't these empty buildings for sale?

The link at bottom, to the Washington Post, escaped from behind their paywall. Even more amazing, the Post has taken a free market/libertarian stance. They are okay with selling unused/misused/unwanted government property. Not everything is a national park, you know. Could this improve housing affordability?

About 1/3 of America’s total land is owned by the federal government. Want to build housing on a piece of it? First hire an attorney to find out who controls it. That parcel could be managed by NASA, NOAA, the FAA, the Department of Defense, the US Postal Service, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Land Reclamation, the US Forest Service, the National Park Service, or the Fish and Wildlife Service. There are probably more fingers in the pie, but you get the idea.

Although Wikipedia says that nearly 1/3 of US land is owned by the federal government, it is vague on how much land is owned by the 50 individual states, 3,100 counties, or 20,000 municipalities. Or the independent school districts, water districts, police districts, fire departments, or . . . It’s almost impossible to figure out.

In my mom’s town, where vacant land is almost impossible to find, they’re raising property taxes again. Not because more people are moving in. Nobody can afford to. But so much of the land which COULD be taxable is occupied by tax free squatters. Two post offices within 500 yards of each other. A dozen schools, plus the district headquarters. The new police station, and the old one. At least 3 fire departments. At least 7 churches, mosques, and synagogues, which all claim their competition is worshipping a false deity and going straight to hell. The big enchilada is the state university, with its ginormous football stadium, soccer field, baseball field, lacrosse field, basketball arena, and associated parking lots. Those sports complexes dwarf the actual classroom footprint.

The university just bought hundreds of acres across the street from their stadium. They were originally going to build a much bigger stadium, with even more parking, but a clever consultant proved that everybody who wanted to watch the football team was already attending. So now that land is becoming a "research park". Next to the new $50 million Amtrak station, with it’s 1,000 parking spaces, which serve less 100 commuters a day. This was the case even before WFH was a thing. Guess which politician the $50 million Amtrak station is named after.

Wait, I forgot to mention the new $44 million library, across the street from the larger of the 2 post offices. 44 frickin’ million. For a town of 20,000 people. The city council justifies this by pointing out that grants from Washington DC will pay a lot of the construction cost. This land will stay off the tax rolls for decades to come.

My mom is perfectly okay with a new library. But perhaps one which won't cost $2,000 per man, woman, and child. Property taxes are being raised to support the public schools. All of those school buildings are older than the current library being retired. It allegedly had a racoon infestation in the attic, which was uncurable.

I don’t hate libraries, schools, post offices, town halls, fire departments, police departments, universities, train stations, little league fields, YMCA’s, DOT truck parking/hubs, or even churches. But how many of these can you cram into a town of only 9 square miles? And then complain that there’s no place to build affordable housing?

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Across the West, a pitch to lower housing costs: Sell federal land