Taxpayer Money Wasted Maintaining Vacant Government Buildings

Traveling through the heart of Washington, D.C. many people miss Federal Building #8 as they drive along. You may be asking yourself right now, what Federal Building #8? The building doesn't look like much, and people who live and work in Washington D.C. probably don't know the building has been closed off to the public for the past 8 years because it is unsafe for anyone to go into. Did you also know you are paying for it to stay that way?

Across America right now tax payers are paying to keep Federal buildings where they are, even buildings beyond repair. because the Federal Government can't sell off the land your taxes are paying to keep the buildings where they are, vacant, unsafe and an eyesore.

The VA Hospital just outside in Maywood, Illinois, just outside Chicago, has been vacant for over 15 years, but in that time the VA hasn't been able to sell the land. The property alone is worth $100 million but the government doesn't make a penny off the building that stretches for an entire block. The VA is actually loosing $348,000 a year to keep it there. The General Services Administration is in charge of this building and many other buildings abandoned across the country and says that the government vacancy rate is actually lower than the private sector's. The GSA has plans to renovate the building in Chicago, but it still sits empty for almost two decades. According to the GSA funding for remodeling the VA building comes from Congress, and the funding has been slow to be approved.

On a hilltop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center sits as a shell of its former self. The crumbling arches of the Gothic-style construction makes the building unusable at all and remodeling impossible. Still, the VA is wasting $348,000 every year to maintain the building.

These empty Government buildings are not just eyesores draining your pocket, they are also public hazards. A dead body was found in a long abandoned courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Government Accountability Office estimates that every year the Veterans Administration is spending $170 million of tax payers money every year to maintain vacant and underused buildings. But reports show that Government-wide, the cost is much more than that.

But there is a movement to try and push Congress to allot the funds needed to rebuild these abandoned buildings and demolish buildings that can not be saved. Private groups have also stepped in to take over buildings for non-profit organizations. The Old Post Office in Chicago is one case of a successful rebuild. The Gotham-like structure was rented out as a set for the film Dark Knight, and last year it became one of the few properties the government was actually able to sell, though it was for only a fraction of its worth before the market and real estate industry collapsed.