U.S. Senators: More must be done for servicemembers living in unsafe conditions

U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Tim Kaine (both D-VA), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent letters to the Air Force, Army, Navy, and to the Department of Defense this week regarding their implementation of privatized housing reforms and tenant protections for servicemembers and their families.

After hearing from military families in Virginia about the hazardous and unsafe living conditions in many privatized military housing units that included leaking roofs, mold and rodents, Sens. Warner and Kaine championed housing reforms. Despite passing legislation to improve these conditions, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office study found that while DoD has made progress in implementing provisions, “gaps in guidance and training remain.”

The senators are urging the DoD and each military branch to take a range of steps, including the necessary actions outlined in the report, to ensure that they are meeting their obligations towards servicemembers and properly implementing all necessary reforms.

Specifically, the GAO focused on implementation of three reforms in order to give servicemembers and their families more leverage when dealing with unsafe and inadequate living conditions.

• More detailed guidance on the formal dispute resolution process;
• Improved guidance on the role of tenant advocates;
• Better oversight of the condition of private housing units.

The senators also called on the DoD and the services to better incorporate resident feedback into the implementation process of the various protections, in order to inform continued progress and highlight areas for additional reform.

“Having spent years addressing privatized housing concerns from multiple fronts – hearing from families firsthand who are dealing with challenges, and helping them to address those; working with installation leadership to push for greater oversight and accountability for these housing projects; and demanding action from the privatized housing companies – we have been incredibly disturbed by some of the conditions that members of the military and their families have been subjected to,” the senators wrote.

The letters include a series of questions aimed at better understanding the progress being made in implementation as well as better understanding what is causing certain delays.

“The purpose of these reforms and continued Congressional oversight is to provide long-overdue improvement to the experience that military members and their families have with the privatized housing system,” they said. “It is vital that the protections and reforms that we have put in place are implemented in a way that works for residents, and there must be a continual effort to examine the use of these reforms and processes.”

A copy of the letters can be found here.