Trump Officials Move Into Military Residences in D.C. Area

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.

According to a Defense Department official, Mr. Hegseth is paying $4,655.70 per month to live there this year.

General Reimer said that the residence had a brass plaque noting that the Army’s 1980s recruiting slogan — “Be All That You Can Be” — came from one of its previous occupants, Gen. Maxwell R. Thurman. Quarters 8 also had a small gravesite in the yard, he said, where General Thurman buried his dog, who died while he lived there.

“I think the dog’s name was something like Fido,” General Reimer recalled. “The dog’s grave had a marker saying ‘Here lies Fido. He was all he could be.’”

When Robert M. Gates was chosen to be President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, he did not own a home in the Washington area. He asked for government housing and moved into an old home near the State Department. Known as Navy Hill and Potomac Annex, the 12-acre site has three residences for admirals.

Congress authorized Mr. Gates to live in the house while paying rent to the Pentagon.

Mr. Gates’s successor, Leon Panetta, was offered his predecessor’s home at Navy Hill.

“I went there and checked it out,” Mr. Panetta said in an interview. “But found out that it would cost probably about $3,000 a month.”

Without his wife joining him, he added, “I certainly would not be entertaining there, so it just didn’t make a lot of sense for me to take the house.”

Mr. Panetta took an apartment near Capitol Hill in the same townhouse he had lived in as the director of the C.I.A.

Defense Department officials installed the secure communications lines he needed to discuss sensitive and classified information away from his office.

Security guards stood watch outside, even when he was not home.

If there were increased threats against the senior members of the Trump administration, Mr. Panetta added, the federal government could build new housing for them.

It is unclear why so many Trump administration officials have sought to live on military bases, but Mr. Panetta and his successor, Chuck Hagel, said that they faced the same kinds of security threats that any defense secretary routinely receives, and felt secure in their homes with Defense Department bodyguards posted outside.

For national security reasons, it makes sense for three- and four-star generals to live at Fort McNair, which is a short drive away from the Pentagon, Mr. Panetta said.

“Any time there’s an emergency they’ve got to be able to respond quickly to whatever crisis is taking place, so that’s important,” he said. “I think that was part of the reason for having that housing close by.”

Mr. Mattis lived in Mr. Gates’s former home at Navy Hill during the two years he served as defense secretary under Mr. Trump. But other Pentagon chiefs, including Chuck Hagel, Mark T. Esper and Lloyd J. Austin III, stayed in the homes they owned in the Washington area, and had similar secure communication rooms installed.

In an interview, Mr. Hagel recalled that it took about three days to set up when he was sworn in, and just a day to remove when he left office.

Government employees patched the drywall, repainted and moved on.

Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael Crowley contributed reporting.