(AmericanProsperity.com) – Even Democrats are now turning against the Biden administration’s remaining pandemic policies. Tens of thousands of federal government employees are still working from home — and the offices they used to work in are sitting empty. Now, Washington, DC’s left-wing mayor is calling on the president to occupy those offices again or hand them over so she can turn them into housing.
DC mayor urges Biden to end telework policies for federal workers https://t.co/Osm66wOM2Z pic.twitter.com/u47HwGwQOs
— The Hill (@thehill) January 3, 2023
On January 3, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), who won a third term in November’s elections, gave her inauguration address. The central theme of her speech was her plan to bring 100,00 new residents into the city — and she has an idea about where most of them could live. Before the pandemic, around 200,000 federal workers commuted to the capital daily. Now, over three years later, 46% of them continue working from home at least some of the time. That means, every day, vast quantities of prime downtown real estate are going unused.
Right now, according to Bowser, only around 25,000 people live in downtown DC. The mayor wants to attract 15,000 new residents by 2028 and, in the longer term, another 87,000 — but only 8% of the district’s real estate is residential. Bowser said last month that “mixed-use communities are more resilient” in a crisis, and she wants to dramatically increase the amount of housing in the city’s downtown. Now, she’s asking the president to either get federal employees back in the offices, so the federal government isn’t wasting all that valuable space, or “realign” the federal buildings’ estate for other uses.
Bowser said turning offices into homes is “key to unlocking… a reimagined, more vibrant downtown,” but will Biden be able to decide?
~Here’s to Your Prosperity!
Copyright 2023, AmericanProsperity.com
