SHERIDAN — The Wyoming Legislature’s Regulatory Reduction Task Force last week reviewed a Joint Corporations Committee bill to allow the state to facilitate large-scale affordable housing development on government land.
The task force identifies areas where state regulations place undue burdens on Wyoming industries, ultimately suggesting changes to Wyoming law to help facilitate economic activity.
While current state statute does not explicitly allow government land to be used as housing, the Office of State Lands and Investments (OSLI) currently allows various leases on state land, including housing.
“We feel like we do have the ability to lease for housing now,” OSLI deputy director Jason Crowder told the task force Thursday. “We have houses, we have cabins, we have people living on state land currently under a variety of different authorizations.”
Among the different authorizations are special use leases, temporary use permits for short-term activity and grazing leases with Wyomingites living in farmsteads on state-owned lands.
Despite this, larger-scale developments tend to hit a few snags, Crowder explained to the task force. Crowder said he’s told lawmakers several times over the last few years that increasing the maximum lease length from 75 years to 99 years would help facilitate commercial and housing development on state lands.
Increasing the limit to 99 years, though, would not necessarily mean every lease would run for the entire length; Crowder said State Board of Land Commissioners rules and regulations limit lease terms to the “economic life of the improvement.” That typically comes after 35-40 years, when leases are then reviewed and renewed.
Ultimately, Crowder said, 99 years would be a key component to having the lending world on board with projects on state lands, because banks look for stability.
With the way the statute is currently written, Crowder said another challenge is the improvements — or structures — themselves because builders can only be compensated up to a certain amount if the land is sold with the improvements.
“And so, the light at the end of the tunnel becomes very small,” Crowder said.
The goal of the draft bill is ultimately to facilitate low-income and affordable housing on state lands because private land is too expensive to make those housing options feasible.
“The concept, at least in part, is a mechanism to make the land available and have the construction performed and just get the housing done, but it’s strictly for low-income housing,” Rep. Bob Nicholas, R-Cheyenne, said.
Having reviewed the Joint Corporations Committee’s draft bill, Nicholas directed Legislative Service Office staff to draft a separate bill from the task force to reflect two desired changes: longer lease terms and including the word “affordable” when referring to housing options to make the bill’s purpose more explicit.
“We’re primed, we are ready, we have the existing statutes in-house to move on any real estate-type transaction that would further an affordable housing effort to whatever degree that needed to be done,” Crowder said.
Sheridan County has looked to address its own housing shortages over the last few years, pairing public and private entities to ultimately create the Sheridan County Attainable Housing Council and the Sheridan County Housing Land Trust.
The land trust broke ground on its first project in June. Later this month, the Joint Corporations Committee is set to review the work completed by the task force, as well as the bill itself, to allow the state to facilitate housing development on government land.
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