'It won't be long': HUD secretary shares video of dilapidated roof tiles at HQ amid bid to move it outside DC
The video of the damaged building comes after Turner announced last month that HUD would be relocating its headquarters down the road to Alexandria, Virginia.
Turner previously cited the fact that the D.C. building is facing over $500 million in "deferred maintenance" costs, while only half of HUD's D.C. headquarters is currently being used. He has also argued the building is not safe, which he further illustrated in a Monday post on X.
"The current HUD HQ is falling apart everywhere you turn. I witnessed this firsthand today," Turner captioned his video posted to X Monday afternoon. "It's not suitable for HUD staff or the people we serve. Moving day can't come soon enough."
Turner showed "damaged roof tiles," which he described as water-logged and "leaking." The video showed a gaping hole in the roof of the HUD headquarters, with a trash heap beneath it full of what appeared to be broken roof tiles from the inside of the building that fell.
"Did this fall on anyone?" Turner asked in the video, after which someone behind the camera confirms it did not. "Well," Turner replied. "It won't be long. It won't be long."
The HUD building will relocate from the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building to 2415 Eisenhower Avenue in Alexandria, where the National Science Foundation (NSF) is housed, but no indication has been made about when that move will be finalized. The move marks the first major executive agency under Trump to relocate its headquarters.
The relocation effort will be a staggered process that will ultimately relocate approximately 2,700 HUD employees currently based at the D.C. headquarters building, according to the General Services Administration (GSA).
In addition to saving on deferred maintenance costs, the relocation will also save taxpayers roughly $56 million in annual rent and operations expenditures, according to HUD.
"This is about the HUD employees to have a safe space, to have a nice place to work, to represent the people that we serve in America," Turner said during a press conference formally announcing the relocation last month. "This is not about the secretary. This is about the posterity and the future of HUD."
NSF staff met this week to discuss how they will handle the HUD relocation, including a potential relocation themselves, local reporting out of Alexandria indicated.
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