GSA faces $50 billion maintenance backlog as Congress stalls repairs

A May 21 appeal from GSA and 22 other Cabinet departments and federal agencies asked Congress for full access to the Federal Buildings Fund and a sharp increase in routine maintenance authority as the government’s repair problem kept widening. The request landed as GSA’s own buildings and the broader federal portfolio showed signs of strain, from aging elevators to a maintenance backlog now measured in tens of billions of dollars.

The Public Buildings Reform Board put GSA’s deferred maintenance and repair backlog at about $50 billion in a March 5 interim report, more than twice the agency’s highest previous estimate. The board also put GSA’s historical maintenance funding at about 0.375% of the portfolio’s Functional Replacement Value, far below the 2% to 4% benchmark considered sustainable in industry. At current funding levels, the board said, GSA’s owned portfolio would need to shrink by 80% to become financially sustainable.

The Government Accountability Office says the government spent more than $10.3 billion on annual operating and maintenance costs for 277,000 buildings in fiscal year 2023, and that managing federal real property has sat on GAO’s High-Risk List for 22 years. GAO also says civilian and Defense Department deferred maintenance and repair backlogs more than doubled, from $171 billion in fiscal 2017 to $370 billion in fiscal 2024.

Edward C. Forst, who leads GSA, told Congress in May that half of the agency’s real portfolio was in fair or poor condition. He said GSA maintains more than 4,400 elevators and escalators, and that he receives an email every time someone is trapped in an elevator in a GSA building. Those breakdowns sit inside a bottleneck that GSA says Congress created and then left in place: the agency says lawmakers have skimmed about $1 billion a year from the Federal Buildings Fund over the past 15 years, while repair projects costing roughly $4 million or more must clear the prospectus threshold, a process that can take more than a year before bidding.

The board said its recommendations have already generated $846 million in revenue. GSA’s fiscal 2027 performance plan puts the federal government’s footprint at more than $1.4 billion in annual maintenance and operating costs and a $26 billion maintenance backlog. The White House’s fiscal 2027 budget appendix proposed a new Federal Capital Revolving Fund with $10 billion in support.