Federal HQ Buildings Only Used At 25% of Capacity (techtarget.com) 52
dcblogs writes: According to federal officials at a U.S. House hearing Thursday, the monumental federal buildings in Washington are largely empty, with some agencies using 25% or less of their headquarters' building capacity on average. The government owns some 511 million of square feet of office space, and capacity problems open the door to the possibility of conversions to housing or commercial uses. Commercial reuse has happened before. In 2013, the General Services Administration leased the Old Post Office Building at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave., to the Trump organization for a hotel.
"The taxpayer is quite literally paying to keep the lights on even when no one is home," said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who chairs the infrastructure subcommittee meeting. The blame for the low utilization has several causes: a shift to hybrid work, out-of-date buildings that waste space, and designs before technology reduced the need for certain types of workers. The Republicans want federal workers to return to offices and reduce telecommuting to at least pre-pandemic levels. In February, the House passed H.R. 139, the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act of 2023 -- or the Show Up Act -- requiring agencies to revert to 2019 pre-pandemic telework policies. A companion bill, S. 1565, is pending in the Senate. It has six Republican sponsors but no Democrats.
"The taxpayer is quite literally paying to keep the lights on even when no one is home," said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who chairs the infrastructure subcommittee meeting. The blame for the low utilization has several causes: a shift to hybrid work, out-of-date buildings that waste space, and designs before technology reduced the need for certain types of workers. The Republicans want federal workers to return to offices and reduce telecommuting to at least pre-pandemic levels. In February, the House passed H.R. 139, the Stopping Home Office Work's Unproductive Problems Act of 2023 -- or the Show Up Act -- requiring agencies to revert to 2019 pre-pandemic telework policies. A companion bill, S. 1565, is pending in the Senate. It has six Republican sponsors but no Democrats.
Sell off the space (Score:3)
Seems to me that divesting the excess office space is the better solution instead of reducing telecommuting. If the work is getting done and the infrastructure cost can be trimmed, sounds like a no-brainer to me.
The cynic in me says this is just a tactic to force the workforce to reduce itself, betting that a sizable fraction of the workforce will quit rather than return to the office.
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Unless you have an entire empty office building, it may be more difficult than it's worth. You could consolidate, but if the orgs consolidating are too far apart they'd come from different congressionally regulated budgets and that would be hard to reconcile. Long term it's a solution, but its not something you can snap your fingers and do.
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Usually what happens is GSA tries to find a tenant that is compatible to move into excess space. Usually very little is saved financially, but everybody ends up with a more modern office and reasonably high utilization.
Personally, I think the GSA should set up some "co-working" spaces for government employees (and often nonprofits) with the excess space. They are constantly looking to divest excess space, but it is a very slow process.
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Government agencies can be very territorial.
I was once in a building shared between the DOJ and the Federal Judiciary.
Each had a TSA-style security scanner. They sat right next to each other, each scanner with a staff that sat on their butts 90% of the time.
To go from one side of the building to the other, you had to leave the DOJ's secure area and then immediately be scanned through the court's scanners. Repeating the process in reverse when you return.
Some people did this dozens of times per day.
It was an
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With those two agencies it's probably a good thing. Do you want the prosecution to have unregulated access to a judge's chambers and documents? They shouldn't even be in the same building, too high a risk of influence.
Now if we were talking say the FBI and the FDA, yeah that's crazy. But those two it makes sense to keep a barrier between.
Re:Sell off the space (Score:4, Interesting)
There are two problems when divesting of real estate. First, problems of underhanded deals that largely benefit very, very few in the transaction. Basically cronyism, possibly even fraud.
The second is when a divestiture ends up needing to be reversed due to changing fortunes and needs. It may actually be cheaper to mothball buildings and to maintain exteriors to keep deterioration at a minimum, because it's cheaper to renovate an interior on an existing building that was otherwise kept in good repair than it is to acquire land and construct a new building from scratch, or to tear down and build a building. Plus it's not like the federal government is paying taxes on its buildings.
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"betting that a sizable fraction of the workforce will quit "
That's precisely what they want as they go chasing the hobgoblins of federal workers somehow forming a "deep state" (a term borrowed from that skunkbutt, Erdogan of Turkey). Also, R's don't believe driving contributes to climate change and if fed. workers have to piss off hrs in commute, that's just fine with them.
This is from the same set of pompous jackasses who come to Washington late on Monday and by Friday are gone back to their districts. Th
The evidence for the 'deep state' is solid (Score:5, Insightful)
As demonstrated by the failure to punish the CIA for its contempt of congress; rather justified of course, but that's not the point...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
That's the story that we know about. It can only have happened if various elements of the 'government' routinely get away with similar things, and claims that there is a single, monolithic deep state may be flawed. But to some extent it's real.
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The United States Agriculture Department office on Constitution avenue [wikipedia.org] was the largest building in the world from just after the Great Depression until The Pentagon surpassed it.
The Trump administration decimated the Science and Research Department [vice.com] long before the pandemic hit. While the building itself is massive, that presidential decision emptied a substantial chunk all by itself, as it was designed to d
Re:Sell off the space (Score:4, Insightful)
General de-staffing is common. Your comment on USAD shows malicious policy, but I guess I'll chip in with general woe.
1. Private: had a job in an operating power plant on the Ohio, 2008. Two floors of offices, for support functions like an infirmary, machine shop. All vacant except the engineering office and the union breakroom.
2. Public: conference in what's called the GSA Building (1800 F St NW) in the mid 1990s (nice auditorium). Typical miles of hallways, more than half the offices empty, people there told me. A big picture of Al Gore (V.P. 1993-2001) stood by the entrance inside, for leading the "Reinventing Government" initiative.
3. Semi-public: skeleton crews at USPS and Amtrak. It's become a safety problem on the latter, with local commuter trains typically better staffed.
4. Regulated/contracted: one-person crews on bucket trucks, garbage pickup, long-haul transport, all jobs that are easier with teamwork.
The only thing resembling former gangs of workers I see are on construction sites, road maintenance, business bubble offices, etc., and even then it's about half.
The question would be how much is efficiency, how much is social policy, how much is management bias. Academics and activists have spent two centuries trying to argue the market is not necessarily efficient even in micro-economic choices. Fairly obvious, and it's a mix, but plenty of well-funded groups take the other view.
Everyone seems to be in agreement that real estate (Score:4, Interesting)
No one actually wants anyone in the poor house but if the commercial real estate market crashed, it would mean a massive quality of life increase for a whole lot of Americans.
A market correction in the commercial real estate sector could act as a pressure release valve on the market as a whole without actually hurting a whole lot of humans. These spaces are generally owned by LLCs and other legal fictions. Corporations aren't people, if we can put the debt onto them instead of working class Americans, we can create a market condition conducive to economic growth and innovation.
Re:Everyone seems to be in agreement that real est (Score:5, Insightful)
A collapse of commercial real-estate would kill most pension funds.
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Rail-road workers
Old industries
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shh don’t tell that to anyone, that might make this issue less tribal and binary. You know, like most things, more complex and nuanced and we cannot have that.
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Yep. Fuck them. Especially those whiny ass teachers.
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Much of the loft space in old urban cores like Los Angeles is converted industrial and commercial space from decades ago. We survived whatever caused those businesses to go tits up and we'll survive this, too. If we don't, who cares, we'll be dead.
All of that lovely change will be rotted out by the drug-induced homeless that plague Los Angeles.
It will happen before the Olympics attempt to sweep out all of that homelessness so that foreign visitors don't get a bad impression of USA.
Re:Everyone seems to be in agreement that real est (Score:4, Insightful)
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Only irresponsibly-managed funds who failed to diversify their portfolio in a manner as to manage risk.
It would still do the economy A whole lot of good for the commercial Real-Estate bubble in dense areas to collapse - A reduction in rents and property value by by 80% or more would be awesome.
If it breaks anyone's pension, then at least their cost of living reduces commensurately, And they can always claim their Social Security benefits If they are in fact of appropriate age or condition to retire.
Re:Everyone seems to be in agreement that real est (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't work like that. Real-estate investments were considered a very safe type of leverage for generations, so they are somewhat over-represented in portfolios today. Key word is leverage. Unwinding that leverage is painful.
For real-estate prices to normalize relative to the broader economy, we need to aggressively build housing. That might drop prices by 20-30%, but it is still a win.
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It doesn't work like that. Real-estate investments were considered a very safe type of leverage for generations
Real-estate markets are not safe and have had major corrections before, Such as 2008, but that is only from recent years and a small example of what can happen -- it's a capital market with no assurance of return and no assurance of principle just like any other business market. The historical stability is irrelevent: Past returns are no guarantee of future results.
In case a trustee allowed a
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That real estate can be turned into old age homes. The pensioners can inturn sell their residential real estate to people working from home. That's how a real estate swap works.
UK government bullying employers to reduce WFH (Score:3)
A friend who works for a major financial institution has been summoned back to the office for 2 days a week by a diktat from on high - and the story is that the government is pressing for this. Why? Because a lot of very rich people are going to lose a lot of money if commercial property collapses in price... Who do you think runs our countries? The people?
Build housing... (Score:3, Insightful)
The amount of people that are cut off from having their own house is going to be a massive drag on the economy. If you expect the new generations to not just do the least possible to get by, you need to provide some incentive for improving their situation, and now, a single room in a rental isn't that.
Between that and closed military bases, there is a massive opportunity to build so much stuff alongside other infrastructure. And yes, I think people in the military can help construct houses (useful skills if they leave) and the government should provide funds to get the houses built.
I happily await all the "the kids today just want handouts". The point of economy is serve the people in that economy. It's not just to serve the market. That is just a theory some guy made up that the stock market should rule all. Well, it hasn't worked. Time to try something different.
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UK housing associations: it's complicated (Score:3)
Most UK housing associations are 'charities' - i.e. non-profits - who borrow on their own behalf to build houses that are more 'affordable' than free market ones. They are allocated - at the behest of local government - to those in most housing need.
Whilst many are well managed, there has been a steady flow of stories of bad practice in the sector, including a child who died of lung disease because her family's apartment was damp, as well as the person who died without anyone noticing for YEARS.
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The main mechanism to regulate the for-profit sector - the possibility of finding decent accommodation elsewhere - is missing given the housing crisis in most of the UK. There are, of course, horror stories about private sector landlords.
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Maybe those do-nothings in congress should show up (Score:4)
House the Homeless (Score:1)
Let's fill those spaces with homeless and get drug addiction counselors assigned.
House of representatives (Score:2)
So why does the FBI need a new HQ (Score:1)
... that's twice the size of the pentagon [centerfors...policy.org]?
Re:So why does the FBI need a new HQ (Score:4, Interesting)
The new site the FBI is looking at is somewhere between 65-80 acres. That doesn't mean the building will be bigger than the pentagon. The author of the article is just trying to engage in sensationalism.
If the article is looking for size of complexes, then the CIA is the current leader. Their buildings are situated on 258 acres of land, dwarfing the plans for the FBI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I guess stating "The FBI is looking for a new location that is at least 25% of what the CIA has." doesn't grab headlines like "twice the size of [the land containing] the pentagon. The title of the article is clickbait and the facts are purposefully comparing dissimilar values.
When a bill is named like that (Score:4, Insightful)
But trying to educate that crowd about the truth is a guaranteed 1-way ticket to losing the next primary to a trump-licker. So, they stand up bills with titles like “THE STICK-IT-TO-THE-WOKE-LIBERALS”. They can polish their conservative credentials knowing full well the bill will evaporate quietly in 6 months.
This’ll get downmodded immediately, but it’s the truth. Did Trump actually build his wall? Did Mexico pay for it? Hell no. And Trump knew it was gonna play out like this.
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Well to his credit he did (partially at least) drain the swamp. By hiring all the alligators.
About that low headcount (Score:3)
I've seen recent news stories that the State Department has a backlog of passport applications causing unreasonable delays. That the IRS got its budget cut even though every dollar spent there brings in 6 more tax dollars from cheats. That the Veterans Administration suffers from huge delays. If only someone could think of a solution... if only.
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As I was saying before some conservative snowflake (or maybe some of those cravenly "Independent, Libertarian, or Non-affiliated" ones) tried to mod down objective reality...
Do note that the argument is basically "Federal government always had too much, but after COVID there's much too much".
i.e. Republicans are literally complaining that the Federal government simply always had "far too much empty space".
Which either means that the Federal government has always been strategically over-investing in real-est
And the new DHS HQ? (Score:2)
Dumbest people in politics (Score:2)
The parts of the government that are "essential personnel" have largely been hybrid working this whole time, including during the pandemic. This is well-known in the DC region. It's not an open secret. Most of t
How about hiring problems? (Score:1)
The blame for the low utilization has several causes: a shift to hybrid work, out-of-date buildings that waste space, and designs before technology reduced the need for certain types of workers.
How many government jobs are going unfilled or even just plan unrequisitioned because critical agencies are being deliberately underfunded, like the IRS and EPA?
You get who you vote for (Score:3, Interesting)
Want legal cannabis? Want student debt relief? Want remote work?
Make a note of who is taking it away or keeping it away from you, then vote differently
In this case Republicans want to take remote work away from you.
You get who you vote for.
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A Short Play (Score:1)
Senator Smith: Jones, what are the results of your study?
Intern Jones: Sir, it appears that Federal offices have been budgeting far too much for supplies. For example, overall last year we purchased three times as many staples as were actually used, and twice as many paper clips.
Senator Smith: We need to eliminate this waste, I need you to draft legislation to address these concerns.
Intern Jones: Yes, sir.
Senator Smith: From now on, all multipage documents sho
FBI HQ (Score:2)
Empty federal offices in DC (Score:1)