A legislator who proposes that Wyoming sell “unnecessary” state-owned land for $1 an acre for affordable housing said his plan for new communities of 10-acre lots might also help wildlife habitat.
Rep. Jacob Wasserburger, a Cheyenne Republican, told WyoFile he doesn’t know how much land might qualify for sale under his House Bill 55 “Wyoming homestead opportunity program.” He introduced the 19-page bill Thursday.
“Right now I’m still learning where the potential opportunities are,” Wasserburger said. Regarding the acreage that might be available, he said, “I don’t have 100% full certainty how much.”
In addition to providing affordable housing for Wyoming residents, building out instead of up could help the state’s wildlife, he said.
“We keep talking about affordable housing … but, the only [current] solution is subsidized apartment complexes.”
Jacob Wasserburger
“I actually think it might help the habitat,” he said, by devoting property to homesteads instead of wind farms and data centers. “That saves the eagles from getting their lungs collapsed,” and he added, saves bats from being struck by turbine blades.
The bill targets Wyoming lands designated as “unnecessary for state needs.” It would exclude acreage dedicated to funding schools and institutions and land used for wildlife refuges, parks, landmarks, historic sites and other public areas.
Wasserburger admitted to getting “quite a beating from the public” and legislators regarding his bill last week. That continued over the weekend.
“This is a terrible idea,” Rep. Mike Yin, a Jackson Democrat, said. Rep. Karlee Provenza, a Laramie Democrat, agreed.
“It’s likely this bill does nothing but continues the narrative that we should sell public lands,” she said. “It’s a foot-in-the-door technique that public land owners must see for what it is — a dishonest attempt to try and take our land.”
Land lottery
The bill would provide $250,000 to the Office of State Lands and Investments to inventory property that would meet Wasserburger’s criteria. Such “homestead clusters” would range from 3,000 to 10,000 acres, containing between 300 to 1,000 lots of 10 acres each, the measure states.
The Office of State Lands and Investments already maintains an online map with codes attached to each parcel showing where revenue from each parcel goes, agency officials said in an email Monday.
“It is unclear exactly how many acres would be eligible for sale if [HB 55] were to pass,” the email reads. “Determining this will take significant detail[ed] study.”
The lots would be sold to Wyoming residents — living in the state for a year — through a lottery and would be reserved for “detached” single-family homes. A person could own a maximum of 25 acres. Businesses and corporations would be barred.
“We keep talking about affordable housing, affordable housing, affordable housing,” Wasserburger said. But, “the only [current] solution is subsidized apartment complexes.”
In such “condensed areas … the crime rate gets to be pretty high,” Wasserburger said. “It’s just not really a healthy way to live, in my opinion.”
In a press release announcing the bill, Wasserburger offered this reasoning behind his measure, referring to himself in the third person.
“While liberal elites want to import the third world and pack everyone into dense high-crime urban areas owned by Wall Street, Wasserburger’s landmark legislation delivers the opposite: families living on affordable acres of land away from big cities,” the release reads. “Radical leftists opened America to the third world which not only drove up housing prices for American families, but also led America into a historic housing deficit.”
Tapping the housing crisis to justify opening publicly owned lands to development is drawing sharp opposition.
“Folks are using the crisis around affordability, the crisis around housing, the crisis around health care, the crisis of groceries, to justify things like tariffs that are illegal, unconstitutional,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury, a New Mexico Democrat, said at a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee in December. Those people are “justifying opening your public lands and resources … then trying to convince the American people that we’re doing this to help you with the everyday costs that are affecting you.
“It’s just complete f***ing bullshit,” she said.
Out, not up
Rather than having people living in a “built up” vertical environment, “we could have people spread out across land,” Wasserburger said. “People would have the opportunity of the American dream.”
There’s one 640-acre section north of Niobrara County’s Manville, population 95, that could qualify, he said.
The state owns about 3.9 million acres, but only about 16,000 might be unencumbered by leases or other uses and potentially qualify under Waserburger’s criteria, Sen. Mike Gierau, a Jackson Democrat, said. Most of the acreage is leased for grazing, oil and gas development or used for state functions like government, hospitals, prisons, state parks or the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
Gierau was skeptical the bill could work.
“There may be 5 acres here, 20 acres there,” he said.
Other institutions and agencies like the University of Wyoming, Department of Transportation, Department of Health and military also own or administer state property, Provenza said.
“This bill is not solving a problem, but certainly is creating many more,” she said.
Me and my wife were talking about living out in the country with lave so we were away from people so we could grow old together and have quite place to live with each other and our animals
Hi there – I would probably cause more issues. I would buy as much of the land as I could to leave it empty. Maybe to retire there in the future, but not to be built up, keep clean and no damage to the environment. Maybe cattle someday? Something natural. WE NEED to maintain OPEN Land.
I think this is an Incredibly ideal I’ve tried of living in Florida I want my own land to raise my family.
This is a wonderful idea. I’d love to have a chance to own land. After 2020 and so many moved to Wyoming that dream of being land owner was out of sight. I don’t care where in Wyoming if I get land there is beauty of all kinds here. Native born Wyoming gal raised in Cody and Sheridan. I would love something close to bighorn mountains. Please let this great idea through.
This would be absolutely amazing! We travel to Wyoming a few times a year. Love it.
I’m Tara Garner , 53 I currently live in Colorado. I must say it is awful here.
I’m a very hard worker I work for burnt mountain services doing traffic control I’m a supervisor. It’s just my little dog and I look to achieve the American dream . We both know it’s never going to happen in Colorado
How do we get into the lottery for the 10 acres?
How do I get on that list I retire soon and I would love to make a good life in wyoming
I’ll take ten acres please email me the information to purchase the land and a map outlining the area.
So what about housing you get land but then can’t afford to build a house on it and water. Lots of places don’t have water feasible to access even if you could afford a well to be drilled. And setting up some sort of tank and leach field for sewage isn’t cheap either plus the thirty thousand or more to get electricity ran or solar and wind setup. The costs of making land livable is enormous. How is that to be handled. People can’t afford an apartment how do they afford a homestead.? Not to bust anyone’s bubble but I’m just trying to look at this realistically. It leaves me wondering at the feasibility of the plan. I like the dream of my own homestead and ya I can get 25acres ok then what.
Just learn how to build a composting toilet, solar panels from old flat screen tvs and foil, battery bank from old car batteries, an earth house from old tires and bottes, recycle your grey water to your garden, and harness your rainwater. Then all those issues are solved after you learn how to be self reliant. I learned all this and more
That is true. A beautiful place to “maintain” maybe “caretakers” of the land. We need to keep open areas, Trees, watersheds clean.
I would love to live in a quiet area where I could retire
I live in Cheyenne WY. Moved there five years ago and love the peace ang quiet. My Grandson is graduating from WyoTech on March 20th and going to work for John Deere. I would love for him to have 10 acres of land to fulfil the Wyoming life style.
This idea is one that has merit and finally someone is thinking outside the box. Can this be put on the ballot for the citizens of Wyoming to vote on? I also believe that people need to have been residents for at least 5 years, which would provide a vetting process that whoever receives a 10 Ac parcel would be able to do something with it.
Please let me know about the Land for $10. 10 acres!
I’m interested in 25 acres. So keep me informed please. I don’t have much money but need someplace! Eventually thanks Eric
You want tho make housing affordable get the bankers,developers and real estate people out of residential property.They only drive the prices up to line there own pockets.
Trying to buy voting is nothing new to politics. He will get all those who love welfare to jump all over this while forgetting those of us who struggled for years to own the home they already own. Those like me who scraped together enough money to buy a home and had to pay, in my case 28 percent loan to keep it. He is jumping on the progressive idea of how to get votes. Just because you are a Republican doesn’t make you a conservative. They are building a lazy, give me everything society with these kinds of handouts.
This is a proposed bill that will offer great opportunities to scammers. Buy the land and then flip it. I also agree with Darren that the folks that are supposedly targeted for this “Benefit” typically will not have the capital to build a home. I am sure Wasserburger has no idea how to administer such a program without graft.
The fact that no one has signed on as a co-sponsor is kinda telling here. There’s alot here that doesn’t make sense, Ok so you sell public land for $1 an acre. Great, now these folks have a parcel of property, 10 to 25 acres. Well next, you have to bring in amenities, like power, phone, roads. After that comes the cost of small waste water systems and wells. Then comes the actual structure itself, transportable homes or stick built. So could someone explain to me how these families who can not afford a down payment on a pre-existing home will come up with the funds to do just the bare improvements before building can even commence?
Jacob Wasserburger should have spent some time doing a little due diligence before going public…..but hey, he got his 30 seconds of glory.
Please read Tom Lubnau’s 1/26 opinion piece in the CSD that clearly lays out all of the issues with this terrible proposal. Again a proposal by our current state reps that only benefits the wealthy and just invites legal action.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/01/26/tom-lubnau-wyomings-1-an-acre-land-grab/
Aww yes, you can buy a plot of land for $10 but you will still have to pay 200K to 400K to BUILD the house, not to mention the money you will have to pay staying somewhere else while your new house is built. But sure go on about how affordable it is.
Jacob Wasserburger – how did this guy get elected? His ideas are lies.
A pinkish good ol boy gop that we have in Wyoming is how he was backed then elected. That and he wears a cowboy hat which in Wyoming is the 1st thing most look for in a representative.
Who is the current market for rural 10 acre lots in Wyoming? Hint, it isn’t dirt poor homesteaders.
You don’t solve working class housing problems by creating amenity housing for your wealthy friends and the ocean of demand by out-of-state retirees from the metros and the coasts.
The metros and coasts set the market for 10 acre amenity lots in Wyoming. No matter how much ag. land and wildlife habitat you liquidate for the purpose, it will never be enough to quench the sea of outside demand and then trickle down to locals. The more rural subdivisions that are created, the further away working locals will be forced to live from the places were they work to make ends meet.
This proposal does the exact opposite of what it says it will do. And that is by design.
He thinks a subdivision with a house on every 10 acres is going to improve wildlife habitat?!? Can’t the legislature review and vet these half baked ideas before wasting time and money on them?
This guy wasn’t paying attention last year when the public-land-sale advocates took a beating. Over 70% of Americans oppose selling public land including 61% of those who voted for Trump.
Not NO but HELL NO! This attempt is not going away. Stay vigilant and involved..
This is precisely why public land should never be wholesale transferred to the State.
State lands were set up by the federal government not the states.
Correct, land was granted by the federal government at statehood in the 1800’s. But I don’t understand your point…? Are you in favor of transferring additional public land to state land so it can be sold to private interests?
What an anti Wyoming goofball.
Start in Teton county.
No investors, 2nd homes, etc.