The General Services Administration, the landlord for much of the federal government, says none of the owned or leased buildings it has data on meet a minimum standard for occupancy set by law last year.<\/p>\n
Under the\u00a0USE IT Act<\/a>\u00a0that former President Joe Biden signed in his final weeks in office, agencies must be able to show that their buildings meet at least a 60% utilization rate, or come up with plans to downsize their office space.<\/p>\n GSA published its first governmentwide snapshot<\/a> of federal building utilization data on Tuesday. The USE IT Act database includes how the 24 largest agencies are using their office space.<\/p>\n The data shows that none of the more than 9,700 buildings are meeting the 60% utilization threshold under the USE IT Act.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n GSA owns and leases over 363 million square feet of space in more than 8,300 buildings. Last year, GSA leaders sought to cut its real estate portfolio<\/a>\u00a0in half.<\/p>\n A GSA spokesperson confirmed that \u201cnone of the buildings meet the 60% threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n GSA wrote in a press release that \u201cwhile this initial data remains imperfect, it is a necessary step that will allow us to continue to refine the methodology and consistently measure the space while bringing transparency and federal accountability to the forefront.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration has cited low occupancy and a multi-billion-dollar backlog of maintenance and repair projects as justification for moving several agencies out of their headquarters buildings.<\/p>\n So far, it has announced plans to sell headquarters buildings for the\u00a0Agriculture Department<\/a>, the\u00a0Energy Department<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Department of Housing and Urban Development<\/a>.<\/p>\n The FBI is also\u00a0moving out of its headquarters building<\/a>\u00a0and relocating to the Ronald Reagan Building, located a few blocks away, which already provides office space for several other agencies.<\/p>\n Last week, the Education Department announced<\/a> it will move out of the Lyndon B. Johnson building by August and transfer employees to a building that used to house the now-shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n The Energy Department will move out of its headquarters, the James Forrestal building, and relocate staff to the Education Department\u2019s headquarters.<\/p>\n The Education Department said the Lyndon B. Johnson building is 70% vacant and that relocating will save the agency nearly $5 million annually.<\/p>\n GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement that \u201celiminating underutilized, delinquent maintenance-heavy buildings is a top priority.\u201d<\/p>\n About 40% of GSA\u2019s owned buildings are in the national capital region.<\/p>\n \u201cToday\u2019s data shines a light on the usage of federal buildings and gives GSA a clear path to smarter space allocation,\u201d Forst said. \u201cWith the problem defined, we can act: increase transparency, cut waste, and concentrate on a stronger core.\u201d<\/p>\n In a report earlier this month, the Public Buildings Reform Board<\/a> found GSA\u2019s backlog of maintenance and repair projects for buildings it owns has grown to $50 billion \u2014 more than double the agency\u2019s previous highest estimate \u2014 and that \u201cradical reduction\u201d of its real estate portfolio is necessary. Congress created the PBRB to help GSA identify underutilized federal buildings that it should sell or dispose of.<\/p>\n According to the PBRB, GSA receives a small fraction of the funding necessary to maintain its portfolio of owned buildings. At its current funding level, the board estimates GSA\u2019s portfolio of owned buildings would need to shrink by 80%.<\/p>\n PBRB member Dan Mathews, the former PBS commissioner under the first Trump administration, told reporters on March 5 that \u201csignificant disposal is the only way to address this massive capital liability.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis administration is clearly focused on reducing the owned footprint, because it is unavoidable. It is the only path forward to solve this problem,\u201d Mathews said.<\/p>\n ]]><\/p>\n Paul Walden, PBRB executive director, told Federal News Network on Tuesday that the board would use GSA\u2019s new data dashboard as part of its criteria for upcoming recommendations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to make any recommendations based solely on data that\u2019s on that dashboard. We would validate it and look at other factors before we recommended a building for disposition,\u201d Walden said.<\/p>\n Walden said GSA\u2019s latest data underscores a point that the board has been making for years.<\/p>\n Using commercially available, anonymized cell phone data, the PBRB estimated<\/a> that federal headquarters buildings operated at 12% of their estimated capacity, on average, for much of 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of these older federal buildings are just inefficient in design, so it\u2019s not terribly surprising. But again, I\u2019d like to see how the data has been validated first,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n