I only have firsthand experience in the US but it makes a lot of sense to me that the influence of colonization by Britain would cause all of the listed countries to have similar issues related to land use.
Every state west of the Mississippi has at least 50% of all land owned by the Fed Gov and isn't used at all. We have plenty of land, that isn't a real problem.
There are only 5 states with federally owned land over 50% (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Alaska and Oregon). Other states west of the Mississippi don’t necessarily have a large percentage of federal land. For instance, Texas only has 1.78% that is federally owned, Arkansas at 9.38%, Oklahoma at 1.59%, Kansas at 0.52%, and the Dakotas at 3.91% and 5.41%. In fact, there are only ten states with over 30% of federally owned land in the Union, granted they are all in the Western part of the States.
I don't know that that is what they were claiming. Land use policy != Land availability. If it was, Russia would have ended homelessness 500 years ago.
Much of that are involves forests far away from where people would want to live anyway. Often without roads.
When people say the issue is land, that usually implies a very particular smaller subset of land which is in proximity other populations, economic centers, and with certain features and infrastructure.
There are also plenty of houses in recently a abandoned ghost towns. The catch is that they were mostly abandoned due to lack of jobs nearby, meaning nobody could afford to live there.
