UPDATE: The Assistant Secretary of Defense’s Office released an update to the Tenant Bill of Rights on June 1, 2020 stating that 14 out of the 15 items outlined in the Tenant Bill of Rights are currently active across military installations. The 15th right, to common forms and documents, has not been implemented by the DoD. The memo states that the DoD is working to implement item #15 along with two out of the following three items “access to maintenance history, process for dispute resolution, and withholding of rent until disputes are resolved.”
Right now, America is looking to its elected leaders to lead and protect. In high pressure situations, slow responses and half measures can be deadly. For military families dealing with substandard living conditions, the Department of Defense’s Military Housing Privatization Initiative Tenant Bill of Rights feels like a waste of time and a check in the box.
Congressional leadership in both the House and the Senate stepped up to defend military families by outlining 18 ‘rights’ granted to military tenants in the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). When the DoD released the Tenant Bill of Rights on Feb. 26, 2020, the document omitted three main mandates: access to maintenance history, process for dispute resolution, and the withholding of rent until disputes are resolved.
The response from congressional leadership was that of frustration.
“These are just commitments, and what military families need right now is action,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who was an original cosponsor of the Ensuring Safe Housing for Our Military Act, which was used to draft the NDAA language. “DoD also needs to provide a timeline and action plan for three outstanding provisions.”
Many affected military families felt underwhelmed.
“A lot of it felt like common sense stuff, just common decency,” said military housing resident and Navy spouse, Amy Zinicola. “It didn’t feel like a win.”
Rebuilding Trust
The Zinicolas are just one of the thousands of military families living in privatized military housing. When Zinicola and her family PCSed to Monterey, Calif., so her husband could attend the Naval Postgraduate school, they were excited to explore the rustic California coastline. But their reality was far from idyllic. Collectively they experienced hacky cough, runny noses, migraines and extreme fatigue, all symptoms typically associated with mold exposure.
“We kept writing it off as post-partum. We just had a baby, drove across the country. We had already been in a hotel for a month waiting on our stuff… [six months later] and nobody was feeling better.”
She first found mold in her 4-year-old’s bedroom. But life on the Presidio of Monterey Army Base didn’t get better.
Remediation exacerbated their mold problem, as according to Zinicola the contractors didn’t use containment techniques, which spread the mold throughout the house. They eventually found mold in the air, pushed through a contaminated HVAC system. When they relocated into the nearby La Mesa housing area,* their health did not improve.
Zinicola found mold in the kitchen. “I looked under the sink and it was black. It had previous moisture damage; you could tell they just painted over it.” Instead of being immediately relocated as they were in their first home, the Zinicola family waited eight days before a solution was presented. While the Zinicola’s kitchen has been fixed, there is an unaddressed water ring on their dining room ceiling that looms over them as they “shelter in place” due to COVID-19.
The Problem with Military Contracts
One of the main complications in fixing the housing crisis is the reliance upon government contracting. The process is slow, detailed, confusing and essentially binding due to prohibitive early termination clauses. Once a contract is signed with a private company it is very hard for a bureaucracy to be flexible. This is why contracts cannot be terminated for grievous offenses, despite the earnest desire to fix the issues.
“These contracts are incredibly involved,” said Shannon Razsadin, executive director of Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN). “[We are] trusting the Department of Defense and the services, that they will put these new measures in place to measure the accountability and performance of these housing companies.”
According to Warner, because Congress put all 18 ‘rights’ into the NDAA “they’re required by law, so we need to see them implemented. And if private housing companies are not willing to incorporate some of these provisions into their contracts, the military may need to rip up their 50-year contracts and find another company to do the work.”
What’s Next?
According to Razsadin, MFAN is focused on the following key elements moving forward: transparency, consistency and trust.
“When something is reported, how do you know that it is being acted on?” Razsadin continued. “We are still hearing instances of families who are sharing information on Facebook pages and those comments are getting deleted. We need to know that housing companies have the best interest of families in mind.”
If you are experiencing issues with your housing contractor, you have resources. Contact your chain of command or MFAN.
“Families are being heard,” said Razsadin. “One solitary voice may not turn heads, but collectively, the over 17,000 stories voiced by military families can’t be ignored.”
*The author reached out to The Parks at Monterey Bay on three separate occasions by phone and email with no response when asked for comment.
