“Alarming”, “not sustainable”, and “not fiscally responsible” were just a few of the reactions by Committee chairman Sen. Tom Carper to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that has revealed huge wastes in the federal government’s huge nationwide real estate portfolio. The GAO study found that 17 of 24 agencies sampled were using as little as 25% of their key federal buildings and, in one building, GAO estimated that only 67% of building capacity would be used even if all assigned staff entered the building at the same time. The report is a blow to the Biden Administration, which has invested heavily to ensure federal buildings lead the nation in terms of sustainability. At first glance, the underutilization of federal buildings reflects a universal pattern of underutilization of all commercial buildings since the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020, remote and hybrid work trends have accelerated across all industries and geographies, and that includes the US […]