Aggressive and ambitious rivals such as China and Russia aren’t the only threats the U.S. military is dealing with these days.
Judging from the pending National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the Pentagon’s own budget requests, U.S. military leaders next year appear poised to take aim at a wave of cases across the country where military families have been forced to live in government-owned homes that were squalid and mold-encrusted.
In the sprawling NDAA bill, which passed Congress despite a still-looming veto threat from President Trump, lawmakers took a number of steps to press the Pentagon to deal with the substandard housing problem, one that has become a PR black eye for the military.
Among the provisions: a repeal of regulations allowing the Department of Defense to place families in substandard housing units and a mandate to update minimum health and safety standards for all military base housing.
The government established the Military Housing Privatization Initiative (MPHI) in 1996, ostensibly to improve the quality of life for service members by allowing private companies to run on-base housing. But the annual NDAA underscores the perception that major problems persist.
Advocates with the Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN) said they were encouraged that Congress has turned its attention to the question of family housing for service members and the impact the issue can have on morale in the ranks.
The bill “recognizes the need to ensure all government-owned and government-controlled military housing, like barracks and housing for those stationed overseas, also meet proper standards,” said MFAN Executive Director Shannon Razsadin. “A healthy place to live is a basic need, and the latest provisions related to housing recognize that service members and their families should feel confident that their military housing meets standards of comfort, safety and habitability”
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia praised the housing provisions in the NDAA, saying it was important keep the pressure on privatized military housing companies by implementing additional accountability measures.
“I will continue to fight on behalf of our military families so that they no longer feel powerless when rightfully demanding a healthy housing environment for their children,” Mr. Warner said.
The bill requires the secretary of defense to implement military housing reforms outlined in a recent report from the Pentagon’s inspector general, and also mandates that the IG conduct an audit of medical conditions of service members and their families who have stationed in unsafe or unhealthy privatized housing units.
The FY 2021 NDAA also includes a 3% increase in base pay for troops, an increase in military hazardous duty pay — from $250 to $275 per month — and $8.4 billion for new military construction projects.
The bill directs the secretary of Defense to set up a working group to create best practices for mold mitigation in privatized military family housing. It also requires the Pentagon to disclose the methods used to determine how the private housing companies receive incentive fees from the government.
Jim Moriarty, a Vietnam veteran and Texas-based lawyer representing several military families in lawsuits against the housing companies, said he wasn’t the Pentagon’s spending plans would address more fundamental issues on housing and oversight. The budget also authorizes an additional $60 million for “oversight and improvement” of the privatized housing initiative and to continue addressing environmental and maintenance issues in government-owned family housing.
“It’s absolutely throwing good money after bad. Money isn’t going to cure the problem,” Mr. Moriarty said. “The problem is leadership and rules and requiring the leaders to follow the rules.”
Unlike civilians, military families are not able to withhold rent if the housing conditions are substandard or otherwise unhealthy, he said.
“If you give [tenants] the ability to cut off the rent, something will change and it will change very quickly,” Mr. Moriarty said. “These people should have the same rights that every other citizen in our country has, to hold their landlord accountable. Nobody is holding these companies accountable.”
The House and Senate both passed the compromise version of the NDAA with veto-proof majorities last week. President Trump insists he will veto the bill, citing provisions that would rename U.S. military bases named for Confederate figures and the failure of lawmakers to include an unrelated provision stripping legal protections for social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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