
Government's Empty Buildings Are Costing Taxpayers Billions - luu
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/12/287349831/governments-empty-buildings-are-costing-taxpayers-billions
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spindritf
_Then the agency has to make sure another one doesn 't want [the building].
Then state and local governments get a crack at it, then nonprofits — and
finally, a 25-year-old law requires the government to see if it could be used
as a homeless shelter._

Every one of those regulations is perfectly reasonable. Yet when put together
they lead to empty buildings staying empty, expensive and useless. This is a
very uderappreciated consequence of regulation in general.

~~~
mschuster91
It should be made a law that Congress (or for that matter, any law-passing
authority, this problem exists not just in the US), should before passing any
law evaluate its impact and interference with already existing law.

Such thorough checks would also quite likely regularly turn up the "bit rot"
equivalent of laws...

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throwaway_yy2Di

        "It should be made a law that Congress (or for that
        matter, any law-passing authority, this problem exists
        not just in the US), should before passing any law
        evaluate its impact and interference with already
        existing law."
    

Ironically, _that_ law would have so many impacts on so many other laws, it
would be impossible to evaluate them all.

It's the halting problem for lawyers. :)

~~~
gamblor956
It's already the law...Congress already has several agencies that deal with
these sorts of analyses. The most famous are the Congressional Budget Office
and the Congressional Research Service. They deal with this silliness all the
time, so they're actually quite good at it.

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crusso
If you read this article and you were surprised (dismayed, I hope), then you
should examine your news sources. This problem has been floating around for
years.

Worse, this is just the tip of the iceberg. A building that has been empty for
decades is an obvious waste, but there are many wastes that far outstrip this
one. There are hundreds of billions of dollars out there that could be put
toward paying down our debt and securing programs that are going bankrupt like
Medicare and Social Security.

That's why when I hear Pelosi and others say that they can't cut a dime out of
the budget. She said, "The cupboard is bare." I feel disgusted.

~~~
runako
It's easy to denigrate obvious waste like empty buildings. But context
matters: even waving a wand and disposing of all of these buildings would
improve the federal budget by ~0.0119%. Put another way, we'd get roughly the
same impact by reducing our order of Littoral Combat Ships by _1 boat_.

If you profile your code, you don't go after the line item that's < .1% until
everything else is fixed; I'd argue that our representatives have more
substantive budget fixes they can target.

~~~
cobrausn
So, you would rather cut a feature from your application than multiple lines
of code that simply allocates memory, waits a long time, and then frees it for
no reason?

In other words, at least the boat is actually potentially useful. The empty
building is completely wasteful.

~~~
Loughla
Um. A building is also potentially useful?

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cobrausn
An empty building, used by nobody but costing the government money, is not
useful to anyone except the people receiving the money. So I guess in that
respect, if the money is going into the local economy, it's a really poor form
of stimulus.

~~~
Loughla
A ship designed for war, not being used for war, but costing the government
money, is not useful to anyone except the people receiving the money. So, I
guess in that respect, if the money is going into something other than the
local economy, it's really a poor form of stimulus.

So, it's a values difference, then.

~~~
cobrausn
Most of the reason money is spent on defense is deterrent. Some people gain
more value out of that than others. Hopefully it never gets used, although if
you need it eventually, it's much harder to build a warship and train a crew
to use it than it is to find an empty building somewhere (or just build it).

Yeah, difference of values is fairly spot on. I don't know anybody who values
an empty building, though. Or didn't, until now?

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Loughla
It's not that I value the empty building, I value the potential for an empty
building a heck of a lot more than I value the potential for large weapons.

I understand where you're argument is - at least we get some use out of the
big boat. I just don't like it, and would prefer to see the buildings be paid
for overtop of weapons.

Man, that makes me sound like a giant hippy now that I've written it out.

~~~
cobrausn
A bit, but I was just quoting Jim Morrison to a friend, so there's that. :-D

At the risk of pushing this thread well past the point of usefulness and too
far into the abstract, you know the building could be used to quarter troops,
store weapons, etc, so long as it is owned by the government, even not in time
of war? Personally, I value the government owning large weapons more than I
value them owning millions of small weapons. The large weapons are more likely
to be used under the correct circumstances. I think that's part of why we
overuse (IMHO) drones - it made it cheap to wage asymmetric warfare.

~~~
Loughla
I'm aware that the could use it for storing troops and weapons, etc. But,
these buildings are not expressly designed for warfare, and therefore could
have other uses. In fact, it seems that we have this issue because there are
steps in place to make sure these buildings get used for something else.

It's a matter of design versus function. The buildings could be re-purposed
for war, but they weren't expressly designed for it.

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xacaxulu
Yet another example showing that no profitable company could ever be run like
the Federal government and continue to exist. Aren't you glad you paid your
taxes on time this year?

~~~
cowsandmilk
You should study companies and their real estate portfolios. There are a
number of companies sitting on vacant properties that are intentionally
unused. As an example, most pharmaceutical and chemical companies have large
unused facilities that sit empty while the company is churning out billions of
profits a year. The main reason is that these sites are contaminated and the
companies are afraid of liabilities from selling the properties. Funnily
enough, this is exactly the first hurdle the article says the federal
government faces in selling their properties. Guess the corporate world ain't
that different.

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aric
The difference is that one isn't _forced_ to unwillingly pay those
unaccountable companies (the scourge of a government's corporate subsidies
notwithstanding).

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kiba
Creating good governance(whether it's government, charities, corporations, and
so on) is one of the biggest unsolved problem for humanity.

Yes, we function quite well on some level. We wouldn't have a civilization
otherwise. It does seems that the government is so inefficient in many way
that reducing many of them would probably lead to an order of magnitude of
improvement in the lives of human beings, economically and socially.

~~~
crusso
Like a complex computer and software system, government needs to be
refactored.

Besides revolution, I don't know how to force that refactoring.

~~~
rayiner
I love the software analogy, because it puts people who think we need
revolution in the same camp as people who think Microsoft should rewrite
Windows.

~~~
crusso
Wow, if only that analogy were appropriate. If you're unhappy with your
government, just install Linux over it or get a Mac.

On top of that, Microsoft rewrites Windows all the time. Their customers
follow them from one release to the next because they do so.

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bernardom
Amazing. It would be great to have some sort of open-sourced effort to catalog
government owned buildings. Kind of like an OpenStreetMap. I don't see why
most govt buildings shouldn't be publicly listed on a database; they can
obviously classify the ones they don't want everyone knowing about.

$1.7B is a lot. I'd be curious how much they'd (we'd) get if the government
sold used buildings that are now in expensive areas. For example, the
Department of Transportation has a huge gigantic building in the middle of
Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, which is the most expensive office space in
New England. I have to imagine the land alone is worth a ton.

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toomuchtodo
Nothing stops us from doing this. We issue Freedom Of Information Act requests
to agencies via [https://www.muckrock.com](https://www.muckrock.com), and then
we integrate it into OpenStreetMap.

It's just a matter of someone taking the time to do it.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> It's just a matter of someone taking the time to do it.

And there's the crux of the matter; it takes a ton of time, and few people
care enough to invest that time. And even if there is someone that cares -
like the people / organization listed in the article - their efforts will only
make a dent in this issue, which is exacerbated by the heaps of paperwork and
whatnot they have to go through.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I'll sink the time into it if it was actually put to use. My fear is I'll
waste ~100 hours on it, and then some bureaucrat will toss it all.

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apaprocki
While talking to someone in NYC government a while ago, they were lamenting
the fact that there wasn't a unified system to view all of the city
properties, who was occupying them, and how much vacant space there was within
the buildings. Fully vacant buildings are one problem, but if you have 100
10,000 sq. ft. office buildings and only 5,000 sq. ft. each is being used,
that is a completely different problem -- but equally important in terms of
eliminating waste or saving money.

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jeffdavis
What is the incentive to say you're not using the space? It could force you to
move to a more cramped location and extend your commute. And your agency's
budget is now permanently lower, with no benefit you can see.

Better to just fill up the space somehow; even it it means hiring do-nothing
people.

~~~
bhousel
Financial incentives could be set up between agencies. Say for example DOT has
extra office space in one building and they can rent it out to DSNY for cheap.
Then DOT gets money they wouldn't otherwise, and DSNY can pay less than they
might pay to rent office space in a private building (This is just an example
and I don't know if DSNY actually rents, but I know some agencies do).

This works if you can relocate teams of people together (along with their
stuff). Also advances in technology help here, as you can scan paperwork into
a document management system and virtualize peoples machines so that it
matters less where they are actually sitting. The city is doing some of this,
but they move slowly.

~~~
jeffdavis
What you just described sounds like a lease, to me. I'm sure that's fairly
common.

The problem you run into here is: who gets the lease money? Why should the DOT
get extra money just because they bought a building that is too big?

The root of the problem is that budgets are based on perceived need with no
downward pressure. The DOT has every incentive to make the perceived need
higher, and leasing out half of their office space is not a good way to do
that.

~~~
bhousel
To be honest, I don't know much about how this works in NYC government.

I think DCAS is the agency that manages all of the city properties. So
individual agencies might not have much control over their own space. DCAS
might need to be the ones to establish the incentives.

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Shivetya
I was under the impression a great many of the buildings counted are on
military bases. that in itself is an issue because as with post offices
Congressmen step and dictate what is open and what isn't

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flavor8
Clearly a business opportunity. GAO/GSA are likely to fund an improvement to
their database
([http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-645](http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-645)).
If any other small-outfit contractors out there want to form a coalition and
put together a preemptive proposal, shoot me an email. I have some contacts
who work in procurement who may be able to advise on the best approach.

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kaonashi
Keeping unused real estate from falling into disrepair and becoming hazardous?
Yea, that's _real_ wasteful. I'm piping mad.

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wf
This is pretty insane. It seems like such a simple problem to solve (eg, send
auditor with an app on his phone, input building condition, occupancy, etc.
sync back to database that has other information, value etc.) But the
regulatory hoops and the bureaucracy involved just break everything. It blows
my mind that we don't try to approach these problems more rationally.

~~~
Kalium
It's hard because there isn't a reliable source of data to begin with. How do
you solve a "simple problem" with an auditor and an app if you don't know
where to send them?

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interstitial
Let's watch the millenialtards confront the idiocies of their 'activist
government' beliefs as they collide with reality.

