The Trump administration has put 443 federal properties up for sale, including the headquarters of many federal agencies such as the FBI ‒ at a time when it is also requiring employees to return to the office full-time.
The General Services Administration, which manages the federal government’s real estate portfolio, federal contracts and government technology announced the plan in a news release Tuesday, hours before President Donald Trump is scheduled to give his first address to Congress.
“Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce. We can no longer hope that funding will emerge to resolve these longstanding issues,” the statement says.
Many of the buildings selected by the General Services Administration are on the National Register of Historic Places, or have recently undergone massive renovations. Others like the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building have been waiting for Congress to approve a suitable replacement building for years.
The statement says that buildings necessary for “critical government operations, such as: courthouses, land ports of entry, and facilities critical to our national defense and law enforcement” will be retained.
The “non-core properties list” includes facilities in nearly every state, including a Social Security Office in Lewiston, Idaho, a FEMA distribution warehouse in Thomasville, Georgia and a Forest Service Building in Elkins, West Virginia.
The statement estimated the sale of the properties, which it says make up almost 80 million rentable square feet in total, could potentially save the federal government more than $430 million in annual operating costs.
The buildings include the headquarters of nearly every major federal agency up for sale, including the FBI, the Departments of Justice, Energy, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and State.
The General Services Administration is also terminating leases across the country for privately-owned buildings used by federal agencies. The terminated leases and the attempt to sell federal buildings is part of a broader move under the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk’s affiliated Department of Government Efficiency to reduce purported government spending waste. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been laid off as part of that effort.
Trump has given federal agencies until mid-April to provide suggested relocations of agencies outside of Washington.
The news comes as hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been ordered by the new administration to return to working in the office full time.
The White House declined to respond to a request for comment on the sales, referring USA TODAY to the General Services Administration, which provided a statement that the listed buildings “often do not provide federal employees the high quality work environments they need to fulfill their missions.”
