State Department: Standards for Overseas Housing Need Review

Filed 1w ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

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Doh De Oh

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Bolles, Albert Sidney, 1846-1939 · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

GAO found the State Department hasn't updated its overseas housing space standards since 1991, even though its stated goal is matching Washington, D.C.-area housing that's gotten pricier and smaller in the meantime.

State's measuring method also doesn't align with U.S. industry appraisal standards, undermining its own comparisons.

Most posts stayed within cost and space standards — 87 and 81 percent respectively — with waiver overages totaling $8.8 million of $497 million in 2025 lease costs, concentrated among executive officers and smaller families.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A department managing housing for over 9,000 employees using a yardstick frozen since 1991 isn't an oversight, it's a policy nobody bothered to revisit. State agreed to review it, which is the bureaucratic equivalent of promising to eventually clean the garage.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Doh De Oh · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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