According to the Omaha World-Herald, Offutt Air Force Base’s senior leaders are backing away from a plan that contracted out building and maintaining military housing following numerous complaints from service families. Concerns about mold, pests, shoddy construction, and lousy service is putting the Air Force back into the housing business. “As an institution, we took our eyes off this. We privatized it, and then we walked away,” said Col. Gavin Marks, commander of the Offutt-based 55th Wing. “This is command business. We are getting at this.”
Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. military has turned over responsibility for building, managing and maintaining most of its family housing to private companies. In 2005, Omaha-based Burlington Capital assumed control of Offutt’s on- and off-base housing, building more than 900 new units and renovating hundreds of others in the Rising View community north of Capehart Road.
But service members from around the country testified at congressional hearings last February about living in poorly constructed houses infested with mold or bugs, and managed by companies that were slow to make repairs. Though no one from Offutt testified, some of those problems were echoed on Offutt-focused Facebook pages like “Rising View Rants” and other social media.
Following the hearings, senior Pentagon leaders ordered inspections of every privatized military home in the country. At Offutt, the survey revealed 96 homes with what inspectors described as “health and safety” violations, such as mold or lead paint.
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