President-elect
During a speech at the America First Policy Institute gala on Thursday night, Trump said he will nominate North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to the cabinet position overseeing federal lands and natural resources.
If confirmed, Burgum would be tasked with delivering on Trump's campaign promise to expand oil and natural gas drilling on government-owned land. But he could also play a significant role in housing, should he follow through on the administration's pledge to allow construction on federal land.
The secretary for the interior also oversees the National Parks Service, which administers the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives program. The tax credit helps facilitate the rehabilitation or repurposing of historic buildings. Housing proponents view it as a tool for repositioning old office buildings as apartments.
Burgum has been a vocal advocate for not only
"One of the things that we have to look at as a country: our housing costs are high in part because of the way that we've designed our cities," Burgum said at the event.
In the remarks, which have
Ed Pinto, a senior fellow and co-director of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute Housing Center, said opening federally owned land to housing construction could have a significant impact on the overall supply of homes.
With just 0.4% of the acreage controlled by the Bureau of Land Management — which does not include national parks or forests — Pinto said upwards of 4 million housing units could be built. Nearly all of that land is concentrated in 11 western states, one of which is Alaska, but Pinto said it could be an easy way to make a dent in the housing shortage, and one that Burgum appears to support.
"Having anybody who believes supply is important and trumps subsidies and trumps income limits is important, because we've been doing that for 70 years and it hasn't worked," Pinto said. "If it were working, we wouldn't be talking about this. The federal government has failed in this effort, and so we need more supply, and one of the low hanging fruits are these 4 million plus homes that can be built on four tenths of 1% of the land that's controlled by the Bureau of Land Management."
Burgum, who briefly challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2023, made housing "availability, affordability and stability" a central element of his final state of the state address in January. Earlier this week, he rolled out a $96 million housing proposal to tackle his state's housing shortage.
The plan, known as the North Dakota Housing Initiative, was crafted by a broad-based advisory committee that included representatives from three banks in the state: Fargo-based Bell Bank and Gate City Bank as well as Watford City-based First International Bank.
Before entering politics in 2016, one of Burgum's numerous business pursuits was the Kilbourne Group, a real estate development firm he founded in 2006. The firm buys, builds and operates commercial properties in Fargo, North Dakota.
While housing groups may celebrate having a like-minded individual at the helm of the Interior Department, environmental advocates are troubled by Burgum's views on energy and his business ties to the sector.
"Burgum's financial ties to Big Oil should be disqualifying, as his family leases 200 acres in North Dakota to Harold Hamm's Continental Resources for oil drilling," said Tyson Slocum, head of the energy program for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "Americans deserve cleaner air, water and a future free from climate-induced disaster, not yet another Big Oil lackey to fill Trump's cartoonish cabinet that increasingly resembles reality television."
