High Trump Officials Moving to Government Housing DC

Hegseth 

  McNair this year.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times

 

By John Ismay and Hamed Aleaziz

Reporting from Washington

New York Times

How Are these houses Empty? Top Vice Admiral Left and others also left or Trump fired. 

 

Quarters 8 at Fort McNair in Washington, situated along the Anacostia River, has traditionally been the home of the Army’s vice chief of staff. But at the beginning of President Trump’s second term, it was vacant.

The general promoted to the vice chief’s position had opted to remain on a different base nearby, across the Potomac. That provided an opening for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to claim it.

As Mr. Hegseth settled into the home, which an Army history notes is guarded by two Revolutionary War-era cannons, other Trump officials also took up residence at housing built and designed for senior admirals and generals in the Washington area.

A handful of White House officials have lived in military housing in the past, but it appears to be unusual for several cabinet members and other officials to move into military quarters in such a short amount of time. 

Three former residents of Quarters 8 expressed frustration that a senior officer was not living at the home, which they said would cause a ripple effect and make it more difficult for admirals and generals posted in the area to find affordable housing.

“It’s a great place,” said retired Army Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, who lived in Quarters 8 when he served as the Army’s vice chief of staff in the early 1990s. “It’s like one out of the movies — you have that spiral staircase and you’re right over a riverbank.”

The trend of Trump administration officials taking over military residences in the region was reported earlier by The Atlantic.

Soon after he was sworn in as secretary of state, Marco Rubio moved in a couple doors down from his Pentagon counterpart. Mr. Rubio lives there mostly alone; his family has opted to stay in Florida, according to a State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, lives in “a government representation facility” owned by the Coast Guard and is “paying fair market rent,” according to Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman. 

Daniel P. Driscoll, the Army secretary, has also moved into military housing, as has the Navy secretary, John Phelan, whose home in Washington was damaged in a fire in May, according to a congressional staff member who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, only Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, were known to have lived for a time in military housing.

There is precedent for an elected official to take over military quarters. In 1974, Congress authorized the vice president to reside at the Naval Observatory, which for 40 years had been the official home of the chief of naval operations. (Since then, the Navy’s top admirals have typically lived in Tingey House, a historic property across town at the Washington Navy Yard.)

At McNair, the Army vice chief of staff’s residence at Quarters 8 sits in the middle of a row of 15 military homes that have long been assigned to the three-star generals on the Army’s senior staff at the Pentagon, as well as a number of generals commanding the post-Sept. 11 wars