Did California save taxpayer dollars on leased office space during the pandemic? See the data

One point that state employees love to make is that telework during the pandemic helped the state save money on rented office space.

But how true is this theory? And if the state did save taxpayer dollars by terminating or not renewing leases, how much are we talking about?

New data from the Department of General Services offer some clues.

The data, obtained through a Public Records Act request, don’t include reasons for why leases were terminated or renewed. That being said, California issued a mandatory statewide stay-at-home order on March 19, 2020, that ended on Jan. 25, 2021.

The Sacramento Bee examined data from 2017 through 2023. The stay-at-home period marks a natural dividing line between “pre-pandemic” (from Jan. 1, 2017, through Feb. 29, 2020) and “post-pandemic” (from March 1, 2020, through Jan. 1, 2024) lease behavior.

The state shed about $3.4 million worth of monthly lease rent prior to the pandemic. Post-pandemic, that monthly offload jumped to roughly $6.5 million.

Surprisingly, though, the state spends roughly the same amount of money as it did on new and renewed leases post-pandemic as it did prior to the pandemic. From 2017 through early 2020, the state spent about $13.8 million per month on leases. From March 2020 through January 2024, the state has spent about $13.6 million in monthly rent.

Predictably, the number of state lease terminations increased after the pandemic. From 2017 through 2019, state agencies terminated a total of 131 leases with 1.3 million square feet of office space. By comparison, from 2021 through 2023, state agencies terminated a total of 141 leases with 1.8 million square feet of office space.

Terminations were higher in 2020, the year the pandemic first hit and the state imposed stay-at-home orders. State agencies canceled 54 leases with 735,000 square feet of office space in 2020, and terminations peaked in 2021 when agencies shed 830,000 square feet of leased space.

In that same vein, lease renewals fell after the pandemic. From 2017 through 2019, state agencies renewed or signed 283 new leases for 4.7 million square feet of office space. In contrast, in the three years post-pandemic, the state has only renewed or signed 251 leases worth 3.6 million square feet of space.

Lease renewals peaked in 2019, when state agencies renewed or signed leases with 2.3 million square feet of office space. In 2020, the year of the pandemic, state departments renewed or signed 96 leases for 1.7 million square feet of office space.