Military services “may be allowing” military families to move into housing with significant health and safety hazards thanks to a lack of proper maintenance oversight, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General found.
A new report looked at how the military oversees private maintenance by one of its largest private operators for military family housing. The report, “Audit of the Military Services’ Oversight of Privatized Military Housing Maintenance,” found failings both by a large private operator and by the military staff on base in charge of overseeing family housing. It also found inconsistently addressed maintenance work, which put military families at risk of several hazards. Hunt Military Communities (Hunt)
Each installation has its own Military Housing Office, or MHO, that is in charge of inspecting homes and handling daily operations. The military services work with 14 private companies to operate 99% of all military family housing. Of those, Hunt Military Communities is the largest, operating and maintaining roughly 52,000 homes across the U.S., with more than 165,000 people living in those homes.
The OIG looked at military family housing at seven installations operated by Hunt — the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and Fort Sam Houston, the Air Force’s Moody Air Force Base and Randolph Air Force Base, Marine Corps Base Hawaii for the Marine Corps, and Naval Air Station and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam — to review how maintenance was being conducted. The OIG found that MHO officials failed to complete “any” of the 14 change of occupancy maintenance inspections of Hunt’s work that OIG personnel watched, nor did they meet any of the oversight requirements set out by the services.
This occurred in part because they failed to provide proper guidance to the private operator and did not require MHOs to document work order reviews. When some staff left, the OIG found, documentation would be lost, leading to improper record keeping. Some services did not require that all documents be kept either. As a result, that left several instances of poor maintenance unchecked while families moved into these homes.
Various maintenance failings across the facilities included not checking laundry machines for electrical hazards, checking if carbon monoxide detectors were working during inspections and inspecting for mold in relevant cases. Other problems included windows that were sealed shut due to potential lead-based paint exposure. Some of the problems came down to staffing; the inspection at Fort Sam Houston found that the base’s MHO only had two staff members who were responsible for overseeing 925 housing units. The report also noted a lack of proper equipment to conduct these checks.
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Additionally, the DoD OIG found that the Departments of the Army and Navy failed to provide adequate oversight of their incentive fee award plans. Private operators can earn these extra payments for “exceptional performance.” The DoD OIG analysis of one award identified that the Fort Sam Houston MHO overpaid by more than $11,000. If not corrected, Fort Sam Houston will continue to make overpayments, resulting in a potential misuse of $1.4 million for the remainder of the agreement with Hunt.
The DoD OIG made 19 recommendations to try and deal with the problems. Those included calling on the military departments’ relevant officials to develop plans and internal controls to provide better oversight of privatized housing companies, such as Hunt. The DoD OIG also recommended that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment establish uniform definitions for life, health and safety hazards and emergency, urgent, and routine work order categories. Further, they should establish uniform response and completion times for the work orders. The OIG found that officials from the different departments agreed to address 17 of the recommendations put forward. Two remain unresolved; the DoD OIG gave the relevant military officials 30 days to present action plans for how to address those issues.
