Navy Base Housing Lawsuit
Almost Paradise?
Families sue over ‘appalling’ conditions in Florida military housing
By Karen Jowers
Dozens of families are suing Balfour Beatty Communities, alleging toxic living conditions and accusing the company of “shoddy maintenance practices and corporate indifference or ineptitude” at its privatized military housing community at Naval Air Station Key West, Florida.
Forty-four of the 56 families in the complaint are military families. The remaining plaintiffs, civilian families, have been permitted to live in the community when space was available. Many children are among the 192 current and former residents named in the lawsuit, which was filed in state court in Monroe County, Florida, on March 27.
Families reported issues such as collapsing ceilings because of water damage, mold, insect infestation, structural defects, HVAC and plumbing issues, electrical problems and the presence of lead paint and asbestos, according to the lawsuit. Balfour Beatty leases and manages more than 43,000 homes across 55 Army, Navy and Air Force installations, including 700 housing units at NAS Key West.
“Balfour concealed the horrific conditions from unsuspecting service men and women and their families,” the 175-page complaint alleges. “When these conditions were discovered and reported, Balfour systematically failed to properly repair and remediate significant problems in the homes,” the plaintiffs claim, and “Balfour misled the families into believing that repairs were made, knowing that families living in the homes would likely suffer serious health problems as a result of the conditions.”
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“We are aware of the complaint and intend to defend ourselves vigorously,” Balfour Beatty Communities officials said in an email statement to Military Times.
MCPON Honea fessed up at a Congressional hearing that Naval Installations Command officials inspected some of the homes and found some to be uninhabitable, surprise. He further stated Balfour Beatty paid for those members to be moved and placed in other homes or temporary housing as necessary.
Which does nothing to address the damages done, none of which should have occurred in the first place. Here’s a cautionary tale for our new SECDEF’s plans for PX/Commissary changes.
Category: Big Navy
Seems like privatization of housing is turning into a serious train wheel
Clustferf*ck, sh*tshow, what have you…
New design from the scholars at the government…
Hexagonal train wheels…
An improvement over square, they claim.
Nothing new here. Navy housing has generally been a bit neglected. Ships first, Sailors, ummm, somewhere around 10th…
Perhaps if barracks and houses had some sort of weapons system attached to them things might improve.
Exactly. Back in the early 80s, I was in San Diego to go TAD on a sub and had to stay in the BEQ for a couple of days. Talk about a dump. It was horrible.
Fast forward to the early 90s when I went into a BEQ in Misawa, Japan. There was trash on the deck! Filthy carpet. Disgusting.
In the mid 80s, I PCS’d to NAS Barbers Point. PO2 at the time. The first house they showed my wife and me was on the verge of falling down. We were shocked.
Nothing new, but the USN needs to make sure it fucking stops happening!
Oh, and I’ll never forget when I deployed to Cubi Point, PI. First, there was a soda machine, candy machine, and dollar changer in the front desk area. NONE of them worked.
Then, when we checked into our rooms, one of my crewmates didn’t have a mattress. He went to the MS who said that he was gonna take care of him! Led him outside the BEQ to the space under the stairwell, where lay 10 or 12 mattresses. Remember, this is the PI. Humid, dirty, gross. “Take your pick, shipmate!” He was very proud of himself!
After that, to build his morale back up, we went to the Baskin and Robbins on the base for a couple of scoops. I shit you not, the only flavor they had was chocolate. Probably about 15 tubs of chocolate. I guess they figured that if they filled up the space with the same flavor, no one would notice. Said shipmate, pissed off to the max, decided to go through every flavor except chocolate. I had to hand it to the server. She was patient as a saint.
Yup, the PI. Where everything’s in place, but none of it works. And I guess Big Navy is part of that too!
This is SHAMEFUL! Is there any way non-military citizens can inspire improvements?
During a port call to Roosey Roads in the late-90’s, our enlisted crew were authorized rooms in one of the base barracks designated for visiting crews.
I briefly visited the room I was assigned, but because it was located a six mile walk from the pier where the boat was moored and I had duty the next morning I chose to sleep on the boat. I made a good choice.
Every single shipmate who slept in the barracks during that port visit suffered from bedbugs.
Missouri Lightening to fix bedbug, crab, other nasty creepy crawlers, flyers burrowers.
Kerosene and pine tar.
Works every time.
Not speaking from experience here…
Ahem… cough, cough…
The infamous Bundy Barracks?
It has been over 25 years and I had to look at the old base on Google Maps, but yes, that sounds right.
Send in the seals.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1912195446266544395
Every Navy-provided living quarters I had during my time in active duty – be it open-bay barracks, three-man room barracks, or the off-base Navy housing – I was required to sign a waiver acknowleding I was accepting sub-standard housing because none of the living quarters associated with the Subase in Groton were considered adequate to current standards. Though I’m sure the Base CO and several other officers living within the fenceline of the base did not have to sign a similar waiver.
I was the XO of a shore command at NLON in the mid 90s. One night I saw a movie on the tube that was filmed at the Subase back in the 1950s. The base was exactly the same, just 40 years younger.
I will always remember the Subase as having the worst parking of any base I was ever stationed at. I was part of a tiger team to try and come up with solutions. I will never forget when the new SUBGRU Admiral checked on board. One of his first desires expressed was to close the lower base off to parking!!! Thankfully he came to his senses, but THAT would have been a nightmare of EPIC proportions.
I was assigned there from 1995 until my boat was sent to PNSY for overhaul in late-2003. For the first two weeks following 9/11 it was impossible to find a place to park closer than a mile outside the gate.
I also remember during my first sea tour they called an All-Hands in Dealey Center for the GRU2 Admiral. They had everyone show up no less than 30 minutes before the Admiral’s arrival just so a Chief could go on stage and tell us all, “Do NOT ask any questions about parking!”
“Do NOT ask any questions about parking!”
BWAHAHAHA! LMAO! I believe it.
I bet that the admiral was RADM Fages. He was the man who wanted to close down parking on lower base. Good on him that he listened to reason, but I am SURE he got sick and totally tired of answering questions about it.
Sub base Pearl was ok, the new barracks were obviously new. The old ones? Well, we fixed the plumbing ourselves. We played basketball by the big ass oil tanks…and only drank water on the boat or in a bottle with various grain adulteration. The water was sketch. Night time fun times were watching the feral cats duke with the mongooses. First time I saw that I rolled in hammered from Waikiki and was like WTF.
In the PI…monkeys! And then insects that were extras on “Starship Troopers.” Guam was the worst. I slept on the floor or on the boat.
Sounds like an All-Points Logistics contract.
Is this how they fix the paper thin walls?
As someone who works for a large contractor providing facility maintenance to KSC, I can tell you we are held to a very high standard. The DOD/DON needs to get their heads out of their asses. Did some flag officer on the verge of retirement award the contract to BBC then promptly retire to become a board member? This kind of shit needs to stop not just here, but all over government contracts. Its been allowed for decades, and just part of the accepted culture which in unacceptable.
“… just part of the accepted culture which in unacceptable.” Testify!, HT3. BBC shoulda been fired when they were busted and fined what was it?, $65 million for their shortcomings awhile back? Seems to me we didn’t have these kinds of problems when there was a “Post/Base Housing Officer” with the Engineering Corps/SeaBee types keeping the facilities up to standards fit for human habitation.
Not sure this is just an issue with privatization of housing. I was stationed at a facility on the east coast back in the late 1970’s I had to get involved to get one of my sailors and his pregnant wife moved to a different apartment in base housing in which the bathtub was not starting to fall into the apartment below, among other problems. The housing was thrown up quick, perhaps in WWII and by 1979 was held together with tape and safety wire. The officers responsible weren’t necessarily uncaring or incompetent but they had a near zero budget to work with and spent their days going from one crisis to another. That housing complex should have been condemned years before I saw it.