Wyoming’s $1-an-acre homestead bill would have sold state land subject to strict covenants
Wyoming’s $1-an-acre homestead bill would have sold state land subject to strict covenants
2026-09-19 · Wyoming · Legislation · Did not pass
What happened. A 2026 bill would have created a Wyoming homestead programme selling state land at one dollar an acre by lottery, in clustered developments of 300 to 1,000 lots, and the mechanism it named for keeping those lots in owner-occupants’ hands was a set of recorded covenants. The House never took it up.
The bill
HB0055, the “Wyoming Homestead Opportunity Program,” nineteen pages, introduced by Representative Jacob Wasserburger (R-Cheyenne) on January 22, 2026. Status: not considered for introduction — the House never called it up in a budget session that required a two-thirds vote to introduce it. No engrossed or enrolled version exists.1
The structure
- Sell “unnecessary” state land at $1 per acre, by lottery, to Wyoming residents of at least one year
- In “homestead clusters” of 3,000 to 10,000 acres containing 300 to 1,000 lots of 10 acres each
- Maximum 25 acres per person
- Businesses and corporations barred
- Detached single-family only, with reversion
- $250,000 appropriation to the Office of State Lands and Investments for an inventory study
The covenant clause
The legislative findings named the instrument by which all of that would be held in place:
disposal “at nominal consideration to owner-occupant purchasers, subject to strict covenants, clustering and reversion, will promote broad-based homeownership while preventing acquisition by business entities and large-scale speculative buyers.”
A cluster of up to a thousand ten-acre lots, governed by covenants written to bar corporate ownership and enforce owner occupancy, is a common-interest community in everything but statutory name.
What such a community would have run on
This is where the bill collides with the state of Wyoming law, and the collision is instructive whether or not the bill ever returns.
Wyoming has no planned-community statute and no common-interest-community act. Its Condominium Ownership Act, W.S. §§ 34-20-101 through 34-20-104, is four sections long and covers condominiums only. Title 34’s article headed “COVENANTS” contains exactly one section, W.S. § 34-1-501, about home-based child care. An association formed to run a thousand-lot cluster would draw its authority from its recorded declaration and, if incorporated, from the Wyoming Nonprofit Corporation Act — a general corporate statute.
The specific mechanisms HB0055 depended on have no Wyoming statutory scaffolding at all:
- Owner-occupancy covenants. No Wyoming statute authorises, limits or provides for enforcing them. Their validity and remedies would be whatever the declaration says and whatever contract law supplies.
- Entity-ownership bans. Same position. A covenant barring an LLC from holding title is a use-and-ownership restriction construed as a contract.
- Reversion. A reverter is a title interest, not a covenant, and it sits in the deed rather than the declaration.
- Cluster infrastructure. Roads, water and wastewater for 300–1,000 rural lots run either through an association or through an improvement and service district under W.S. § 18-12-101 et seq. The bill did not specify which.
How it was received
WyoFile reported the bill on January 26, 2026, quoting Representatives Mike Yin and Karlee Provenza describing it as a stalking horse for public-land sales, and reproducing the sponsor’s own press release.2 The Jackson Hole News&Guide’s end-of-session “Capitol Corner” listed it among the public-lands measures that died.3
The company it kept
Every 2026 Wyoming housing-supply bill except one failed:
- SF0064, “Investment in Wyoming housing,” a $30 million revolving loan fund at the Wyoming Community Development Authority, with findings that “There is in this state a critical shortage of adequate, affordable housing” — failed introduction 15–15, a literal tie.
- SF0089, narrowing the W.S. § 15-10-107 public-property tax exemption for public-private housing partnerships — failed introduction 18–13.
- HB0183, “Renters’ property tax relief” — not considered for introduction.
- HB0141, the “Fifth Amendment Protection Act,” which would have banned local housing mitigation fees — passed the House, blocked 24–7 in the Senate.
The survivor was HB0002, the Fast Track Permits Act, chapter 42, which put local governments on a permit clock and took effect July 1, 2026.
Nothing is carrying it forward
No 2026 interim committee has a housing or land-disposal topic on its approved list. HB0055 has no committee sponsor waiting for it in 2027, and would have to be refiled by a member. Its interest now is as a description of how Wyoming would build a large new covenanted community if it chose to — on recorded documents, with no statute underneath them.
Related Wyoming HOA Topics
- HB0055 (2026), “Wyoming Homestead Opportunity Program” — introduced bill text, Wyoming Legislature ↩
- Angus M. Thuermer Jr., “A Wyoming lawmaker wants to sell state land at $1 per acre for affordable housing,” WyoFile, Jan. 26, 2026 ↩
- Jasmine Hall and Charley Sutherland, “Capitol Corner: Plethora of bills die along with some public lands policy,” Jackson Hole News&Guide, Feb. 28, 2026 ↩
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