National Science Foundation to Leave Virginia Headquarters as HUD Moves Out of DC

Trump administration officials and Virginia governor announce change but give no word on where NSF will be relocated.

The National Science Foundation will be moving so the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development can take over its offices in Alexandria. 

The 1,800 employees at the science foundation were notified last week in a staff memo, a day before authorities from the federal and state government—including HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Gov. Glenn Youngkin—announced the change at a press conference. 

NSF staff were not told when or where they would move—and they still don’t know. 

HUD is located near the National Mall in Washington and, like many federal agencies since President Trump took office in January, has been told to prepare for deep staff cuts. Ongoing negotiations over the federal budget have prompted some industry groups, such as the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), to keep close watch on HUD’s future. 

NAHB last month forecast, based on then-current budget lines, “a $33.6 billion cut—about 44%—for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.” The Urban Institute earlier this year estimated that half of HUD employees could lose their jobs based on calculations by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency overseen by billionaire Elon Musk. Musk has since left the administration. HUD had 2,700 employees in early January.

The sudden move by HUD to the Eisenhower Avenue site in Alexandria has been interpreted in a myriad of ways: as a cost-saving measure by the Trump administration because the HUD building is in need of some repair and as a rebuke to a federal agency that has been pivotal in providing funds, mortgages and aid to first-time homeowners and people in need. 

Other commentators have seen the move as targeting the nearly 75-year-old science agency that has been a reliable source of university research and climate science. According to the NSF website, “our investments account for about 25% of federal support to America’s colleges and universities for basic research.”

Michael Peters, Trump’s appointee as the General Services Administration’s public building services chief, said during the press conference that the HUD shift aims to avoid $500 million in deferred maintenance costs and $56 million in annual operating and maintenance expenses. 

“HUD will be the first major agency headquarter relocation in the Trump administration’s effort to right-size our federal real estate portfolio,” Peters said. He offered no schedule as to when moving vans will roll: “We don’t have a specific timeline yet, but we are going to be erring on the side of moving faster than slower.”

Youngkin didn’t provide details about where NSF could go but said Virginia had coordinated the HUD move with Peters. “We had multiple sites that we presented to GSA for HUD, and we’re just dusting off and going to present them for NSF. There are sites here in Alexandria, and there are sites in other spots in Northern Virginia…I want to keep them here,” Youngkin said at the press conference. 

Youngkin, a Trump ally, has recently promoted a state website at virginiahasjobs.com to advise  federal workers who lost jobs in the past few months.

Turner, who was confirmed as HUD secretary in February, said the search for a new building for HUD was “very deliberate and very serious.” He added: “We’re well aware of our colleagues here at NSF…that is not lost upon me that we do have colleagues here, and we will be very strategic.”

Since its inception in the 1960s, HUD has overseen a variety of programs focused on affordable urban housing, including funding community development grants and mortgage insurance, as well as battling discriminatory practices. 

HUD was born amid a rising demand for affordable housing. Anxiety over housing and rent again have soared in this decade. In the past week, the Democratic primary for mayor in New York apparently reflected some dynamic voter concerns over affordability. Onetime governor Andrew Cuomo lost to Zohran Mamdani, an assemblyman who promised to focus on cost-of-living issues, including freezing rent for millions of New Yorkers. 

The NSF has been embattled since President Trump launched his second term in late January. 

In May, 100 Democratic congressmembers wrote a letter to Trump that expressed concern over changes at the NSF, including the termination of more than 1,000 grants totalling about $739 million and the sudden resignation of its director, Sethuraman Panchanathan.

“The NSF has, for decades, been a cornerstone of American innovation, funding groundbreaking research that has led to advancements in medical imaging, artificial intelligence, geographic information systems, and numerous other fields,” the lawmakers wrote. “Central to the NSF’s success has been its commitment to a merit-based, peer-reviewed grant process, ensuring that funding decisions are made based on scientific excellence and potential impact, free from political or ideological influence.”

Nationwide, universities have been pressured by the Trump administration to rein in student protests, and funding for research—notably withholding or canceling grants—has been used as a cudgel against some institutions. This month, a judge ruled in favor of universities that pushed back on an NSF decision, in May, to thwart current research capabilities. A federal judge blocked the NSF from sharply cutting reimbursements for administrative and facility costs indirectly related to grant-funded research, ruling that it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

NSF funding has gone to several universities in Virginia, including research innovation hubs at the University of Virginia, research opportunities for undergraduates at Old Dominion University and 9 percent of an almost $620 million research budget at George Mason University. 

NSF funds have supported early and pivotal research for web search engines such as Google, and its funds also helped the development of magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose health issues and advancements in semiconductors, said Rigoberto Hernandez, a chemistry professor at Johns Hopkins University whose research programs have been funded by NSF.

NSF funding has made the U.S. “competitive and many times better than the rest of the world,” Hernandez said. “The science that is being done—that’s being supported by the National Science Foundation—doesn’t have politics. It just helps every American.” Hernandez said NSF research has been the basis for countless patents. It has also been pursued by U.S. scientists who have been awarded Nobel Prizes for their contributions in a range of critical industries. 

“The students that we’re training are exactly the students (needed for) the semiconductor industry. If we can’t train those students, then that industry won’t be able to obtain the people that they need to be successful in this country,” Hernandez said.

The American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403 issued a statement that  described the NSF upheaval as “callous” toward federal employees, though beneficial to Turner. 

The move provides perks for Turner, including a dedicated executive suite, the building of an executive dining room, parking spaces for his cars, an exclusive elevator for Turner, a potential gym for him and his family and more, according to the union statement. 

“While Secretary Turner and his staff are busy enjoying private dining and a custom gym, NSF employees are being displaced with no plan, no communication, and no respect,” the union said. “This callous disregard for taxpayer dollars and NSF employees comes after the Administration already cut NSF’s budget, staff and science grants and forced NSF employees back into the office.”

A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat who represents a part of Northern Virginia and a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee that oversees NSF, said “he is trying to connect with the administration to understand the decision-making, the plan for NSF employees in the short- and long-term, and anticipated costs of the move.” 

Earlier this year, Subramanyam introduced the “Cost of Relocations Act” to require a cost-benefit analysis be submitted to Congress to see if any move of a federal agency “is in the best interest of the taxpayer and the agency’s mission,” the spokesperson said.

Youngkin, who has pushed for continued federal funding at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, a laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy that focuses on nuclear physics research and is known at the Jefferson Lab, touted the HUD move as a demonstration of Virginia being “the best place in America to live and work and raise a family.” 

The greater Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia area has been at the forefront of Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce. According to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), 321,516 full-time civilian federal workers live in Virginia, accounting for about 10 percent of full-time civilian employees in Virginia.

Both the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate leadership have created committees to examine the employment implications of federal government cuts. 

Clark Mercer, executive director of the MWCOG, noted that many businesses that work with the NSF moved to the region to be close to its headquarters. The announcement of the HUD move was not coordinated with the greater D.C. area local officials, he said, who now have to figure out a plan for future use of the HUD building that was built in the 1960s.

“I hope that a response to that might be a recognition that the federal workforce is pretty large and this is a huge part of the economy here,” Mercer said. “These decisions, irrespective of (whether) folks like them or don’t like them, they need to be coordinated. You need to think through some of the answers to some of the questions.”

Beyond recent White House scrutiny of HUD’s work, the agency has survived several accountability scandals over the years, often linked to political favoritism and mismanagement of funds. Notable revelations of abuse occurred during the Reagan era when patterns of waste and fraud were uncovered in 1989. 

Cover photo:  The current headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Va. Credit: National Science Foundation