We hear that there is a case in Region 6 where terminated employees are getting kicked out of federal housing, is this happening across the board?
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We hear that there is a case in Region 6 where terminated employees are getting kicked out of federal housing, is this happening across the board?
If you live in government housing, the cost of the “government quarters” is subtracted from your paycheck. So if you don’t have a government paycheck, there is no way they can charge you for the government quarters. So it unfortunately makes sense that this would be happening.
I guess (not that I agree with firing people) that giving folks notice and letting them pay out of their own budgets for some months would be another way to approach it.
However, if an employee is serving as a “volunteer” (I don’t know if these were cut in the purge, but if they did) they can have their “quarters” paid by the benefitting function. Meaning, volunteers can use government quarters if they have an agreement to do so, as I described above!
I mention this because a forward thinking supervisor could put the terminated employee(s) on a volunteer agreement, in exchange for (we used 8 hrs/week) work. That’s how the benefitting function can ease the stress on a short term, at least…
If you are not employed or have a volunteer agreement you cannot stay in government housing. I’ve had employees fired for misconduct that were given a week to leave. However, if you don’t leave by that time it takes the agency awhile to get law enforcement to boot you out. I’d suggest staying as long as you can.
I was working for NPS in 1977.
A District Ranger?? GS-12 was in per diem status at about 100 miles from his duty station on Memorial Day weekend. He had the authority to start work at any time.
At 2:00 am in the morning he got into his NPS rig, and started driving back to his duty station. He was killed in a head on accident about a half hour into his drive home.
In about a week, his widow was sent a letter, that since there was no longer a Federal employee living in government housing she needed to vacate the premises as soon as possible!!!
That was my first Federal job at a high enough level where I got to witness things like this.
Never trusted the NPS after that.
Years later, late in my career I was wrestling with a issue on special use permit. And it was wrapped up on the right thing to do and regulations.
I never told my boss, the details of the issue, but his advice to me was “first figure out the right and moral thing to do and then see if you can do it legally”.
In government service, those are usually two different things.
Our forest supe said there’s a grace period, like a month or so, if anyone is in this situation. At least that’s for my forest/region, not sure about elsewhere
You had a good Forest Supe.
That letter should sit in the bottom of their inbox for months. In fairness, I suspect I only had one Forest Supervisor, that would have sent the letter a day or two after the funeral.
I can’t say the same for the NPS.