Savannah Beagies, who lives in military housing in the Sandpiper Crescent neighborhood of Virginia Beach, talks about some of the issues she’s found inside her home in February 2019. (L. Todd Spencer, The Virginian-Pilot/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine asked military leaders to explain why privatized housing reforms signed into law three years ago were implemented in a way that fails to create a standard of quality and safe housing for service members.
In a series of letters addressed to the secretaries of the Navy, Air Force, Army and overall Department of Defense on July 6, Warner and Kaine urged the leaders for answers on the long-awaited reforms, citing the findings of a Government Accountability Office report released in April.
“The report highlights a litany of ways in which the function of some of these reforms differs across the services, and varies installation-to-installation. This echoes a concern that we have had — which is that as DoD and each of the services worked to implement these reforms, many of these efforts have happened in a piecemeal or stove-piped manner, in some instances with an eye more towards compliance, rather than resident experience,” the letters read.
The report analyzed the implementation of the privatized housing reforms enacted in 2020 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. While the housing units are managed by a range of private companies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military services are responsible for project oversight.
“DOD has taken steps to implement these requirements, but gaps in guidance and training remain,” the report reads.
The reforms in question include dispute resolution guidance, a tenant “bill of rights” and increased oversight of the condition of private housing units across approximately 200 installations nationwide. The protections were championed by the Virginia senators.
“Our service members and their families have been forced to navigate housing conditions and processes as part of the privatized housing system that have been woefully unacceptable,” reads the letters signed by Warner and Kaine.
Some of those dilapidated homes were right here in Hampton Roads, in military housing communities owned by Lincoln Military Housing. The company came under scrutiny in 2019 after local military families described repeatedly reporting issues of mold, vermin and water intrusion, and made routine service requests to the companies that manage their privatized housing, only to face indifference. The company was sold to new ownership in 2021 and is now named Liberty Military Housing.
According to the GAO report, the DoD now conducts inspections of privatized homes prior to resident occupancy, but clear and consistent inspection standards have not been developed and the military departments have not provided adequate inspector training.
“This has contributed to inconsistencies in how inspectors rate homes, resulting in homes with similar issues receiving different ratings and, according to private housing company representatives, has increased project costs,” the report reads.
The DoD has also issued guidance establishing a formal dispute resolution process, but the guidance lacks information on how and when tenants can file a formal dispute. Additionally, the DoD designated personnel to act as tenant advocates, but the services “have not clearly identified the roles and responsibilities for these personnel, or communicated useful information to residents about how they can and cannot use the tenant advocates.”
In response, Warner and Kaine are asking the services how the challenges outlined by the Government Accountability Office will be resolved and what the timeline for each issue looks like. The goal is to create a standard a quality and safe housing across the services.
“It is vital that the protections and reforms that we have put in place are implemented in a way that works for residents. … To the maximum extent possible, DoD and each of the services should be working to standardize implementation of these reforms, so that all members of the military across the country can utilize the same protections — informed by implementation best-practices of what is working and what is not — with the aim of providing them with quality and safe housing that they have earned,” the letters read.
caitlyn.burchett@virginiamedia.com
©2023 The Virginian-Pilot.
Visit pilotonline.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
