‘Agencies must be where the people are:’ Trump alters priorities in relocating federal buildings

Urban areas in need of economic development, as well as historic locations and properties, will no longer be priorities for agencies when making decisions on where to locate federal buildings.

Two long-time executive orders that President Donald Trump rescinded on Tuesday had encouraged agencies for years to, at least in part, prioritize those factors when determining the locations of headquarters, field offices and other federal buildings.

The new executive order comes as the Trump administration continues its efforts to scale down the government’s real estate holdings and move many government facilities outside the National Capital Region and across the country. Trump said removing those guidelines would make federal office space more cost-effective and efficient.

“To provide the highest quality services in an efficient and cost-effective manner … agencies must be where the people are,” the executive order states.

Dan Mathews, a member of the Public Buildings Reform Board and former Public Buildings Service commissioner under the first Trump administration, said the President’s move should give agencies more flexibility in where they decide to locate their buildings.

“Those other executive orders were more about socioeconomic goals as opposed to what’s the most effective way to house federal work,” Mathews said in an interview with Federal News Network. “I do think it will have the effect of creating some more options as to how to be the most cost-effective.”

As part of Trump’s new executive order, the General Services Administration, which acts as the government’s landlord, will be required to amend two sections of federal regulations on federal space location and utilization to remove the two previous executive orders — one from the Clinton administration and the other from the Carter administration.

Locating federal buildings should “strike the right balance”

Norman Dong, former Public Buildings Service commissioner in GSA under the Obama administration, said that former President Jimmy Carter’s order has helped guide federal location policy for nearly 50 years, but it was never meant to be a rigid or absolute requirement.

“The government has been able to consider other factors, including agency mission and function, security requirements, as well as another federal statute that requires agencies to consider rural locations,” Dong said in an interview with Federal News Network. “There are multiple factors to consider, and at the end of the day, it has been about striking the right balance among these factors.”

Carter’s goal was, in part, to use federal presence in urban areas as a way to try to drive urban development in certain regions or neighborhoods. In Washington, D.C., for example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) both moved their headquarters to the NoMa neighborhood around 2008. In the years since, the neighborhood has seen a major spike in urban development and population growth.

But Dong said agencies’ decisions in their office locations also involve many other considerations, such as costs and security needs.

“If you look at FBI field offices, for example, you’ll see many that are not located in downtown areas given the highly specialized nature of these facilities and their security requirements,” Dong said. “In places like Atlanta or Sacramento, these FBI offices are located far outside of the central city.”

And over time, Dong said there has also been some “uneven application” of the Carter-era order that prioritized federal buildings in urban areas.

“In some cases, this was the primary factor in locating the federal facility, but in others it was one element among many,” Dong said. “With the rescission of these two executive orders, it places additional emphasis on some of those other factors that have always been part of the decision criteria.”

In part, current federal regulations state that agencies should include a focus on locating federal buildings “in ways that serve to strengthen the nation’s cities and make them attractive places to live and work, conserve existing urban resources, and encourage the development and redevelopment of cities.”

When locating in urban areas, the Carter-era order told agencies to prioritize placing buildings in “centralized community business areas and other areas recommended by local officials.”

The executive order from the Clinton administration similarly said agencies should consider locating buildings in historic properties and historic districts, “when operationally appropriate and economically prudent.”

“If no such property is suitable, then federal agencies must consider other developed or undeveloped sites within historic districts,” the regulations state. “Federal agencies must then consider historic properties outside of historic districts, if no suitable site within a district exists.”

But in Tuesday’s executive order, Trump argued that the previous administrations’ efforts did not have the desired effect, and ultimately called for a revision to those regulations on federal buildings.

“President Carter’s order has instead prevented agencies from relocating to lower-cost facilities,” Trump wrote. “President Clinton’s order failed to adequately prioritize efficient and effective government service.”

More agency relocations lie ahead

Trump’s changes will likely come into play as agencies push forward with broad reductions in force (RIFs) and reorganization plans. A White House memo from February called on agencies to submit proposals for relocating federal offices and bureaus outside the National Capital Region and to “less-costly parts of the country.”

In the memo, the White House also told agencies to “consolidate regional field offices to the extent consistent with efficient service delivery,” while at the same time aligning any office closures or relocations “with agency return-to-office actions to avoid multiple relocation benefit costs for individual employees.”

Some agencies are already taking steps to that end. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, is planning to move out of its headquarters building in downtown Washington, D.C., although plans for a new headquarters location aren’t yet clear.

At the same time, GSA is looking to cancel hundreds of leases and drawing up a new list of federal office buildings marked for expedited sale and disposal. Federal News Network first reported that GSA and the Department of Government Efficiency originally sought to terminate 1,000 leases, but later walked back the terminations of several hundred leases.

GSA expects to conduct five more rounds of mass lease reductions by September. The agency has also set an 80% utilization goal for all federal buildings.

Trump took similar actions in his first term to downsize and relocate federal real estate holdings to more rural and less costly areas. In one notable example, the Department of Agriculture in 2019 relocated major research facilities for two of its agencies: the Economic Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

At the time, the Trump administration’s goal was to cut costs on real estate, but the Government Accountability Office later found that USDA didn’t take into account the cost of staff attrition when choosing where to relocate the agencies. ERS and NIFA lost between 40% and 60% of staff members upon relocating to Kansas City, Missouri. When they eventually managed to staff up again, the newly hired employees were less experienced and less diverse.

Some members of Congress are trying to prevent similar situations from occurring, as more agencies are expected to downsize and relocate federal buildings. In March, Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate introduced the COST of Relocations Act in an attempt to set stricter requirements for agencies to conduct cost-benefit analyses before they permanently relocate any buildings.

“Abruptly uprooting those agencies for political reasons not only endangers their critical missions, it’s also a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who introduced the legislation, said last month. “This bill ensures that big decisions like these are made thoughtfully and driven by the best interests of the American people and their tax dollars.”

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email drew.friedman@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at drewfriedman.11

Copyright © 2026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.