Privatized Housing Company: Feces, Mold, Cracks, Cockroaches…
The Vinales Family is staying in an RV until problems with their housing unit are resolved. (Vinales Family)
An Army family walked into a house, on base, for the first time. Instead of the smell of fresh paint, clean materials, and evidence of contract work to get the residence ready for them, something else greeted them… Cockroach infestation.
Doing what any family would do, they contacted the contractor in charge of the housing unit. In addition to calling in the cockroach issue, they put in trouble call requests for other issues that needed to be fixed. They had cracks in the house and they also had to contend with mold. This appears to be widespread involving other families.
From Military Times:
The lawsuit cites examples of human waste deposited under houses because of plumbing that was disconnected for years; mold growing on the rim of a child’s toothpaste tube in a mold-infested bathroom; floors detaching from walls, leaking roofs, and asbestos and lead-based paint filling the air.
Many of the service members and their family members have fallen ill with a variety of respiratory and other symptoms, have lost nearly all their personal possessions because of mold contamination, and paid their full base housing for the “woefully substandard” housing, according to the lawsuit.
Captain Kline, the father in the above incident, attempted to bring this up the chain at the contracting company. He ended up being investigated, but the investigation resolved in his favor.
More information on this could be read at Military Times.
Category: Military issues
The people that manage these housing units should be required to live in them too.
There.
Problem solved.
DUH!
I chuckled when I read the Military Times article, because in the US Army, O3 are CPTs, NOT Capts.
O5s are LTCs, NOT LT Cols.
That is Air Force speak.
*smile*
Supposedly that’s the universal journalistic standard across the board. Annoys the fire out of me that they don’t use correct branch-specific abbreviations, but it is what it is.
Thank You, Eden.
You nailed it.
😉😊
I got in a major urinary contest with an editor because he referred to me as a Capt in an article. I told him I was Army, not USAF/USMC, and folks would think I was a phony. Made no difference because he had to use the blessed Style Guide. He used Capt.
Were airmen or Marines with OCD will insist upon Capt (Air Force) and Capt. (Marines). Both use upper and lower case, but the Marines insist upon periods. (Marines are just being proper in English, but I learned about it from an Air Force dipstick who insisted Jane Fonda’s trip to Hanoi was “legitimate expression of dissent” and joined in order to get out of being drafted and sent to ‘Nam too. Imagine the fun that drip was.)
“Where” I meant to start… dang typo.
It’s stupid that US military services abbreviate the same ranks in different ways. Blame the services for the stupidity, not the newspapers.
AFAIK only the US Army uses the 3 letter/number abbreviations anyway. Other services and other nations use more commonly accepted abbreviations like Lt. Col., S/Sgt, M/Sgt, Capt., etc.
And I’m not even sure when that started in the Army. Vietnam era or maybe later in the 70’s?
’70s… along with banana suit.
So typical…someone reports a problem and the Army investigates them.
Yep, there were never any problems on Camp Swampy until that troublemaker showed up!
Geez…
If a contractor mentions “blackwater,” you should inquire more closely to make sure. Just sayin’.
Housing contractors have always been a scam and a rip off.
When you try to clear housing, you work your butt off to clean and paint, yet there is that ONE LITTLE SPOT that you missed that requires you to pay FULL contractor costs in order to clear housing.
Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all to hell.
(ask me how I know this little thing)
In the old days when Post Engineers ruled housing about the only way to clear was to hire a cleaning company that was on the word of mouth approved list. Inspector barely looked unless we tried a DIY clean and then it got a white glove. Even had to do it once when the quarters were not going to be reissued because they were getting a total remod.
Exactly right. We went through that drill three times. Extortion, plain and simple.
Had the white glove treatment at Ft Ord as it was closing. Wife and I cleaned for two weeks.
Got dinged on the porch light bulb but replaced it on the spot. I was the last resident before the duplex was torn down.
Never lived in gubmint housing, but saw my share of it and heard the horror stories that all that entailed. Career AF Brother would buy a house at each CONUS duty station and then sell when PCS came along. This crap is inexcusable.
Fuckers….they should take a beating for general purposes over this shit…
Moldy kids stuff because the contractor is a fuckstick? Someone needs a tune-up.
(On the advice of counsel) not that I would ever {wink, wink} advocate violence against any piece of shit defrauding the government and mistreating military families.
Confine the miscreants to quarters.
I thought I was going to see article saying “Fort Polk”, I am disappointed. Polk had this issue last year though.
No mention of the joys of barracks life, “just keep painting over the mold”.
I was a Navy brat and lived in about 8 or 9 different places (not counting motels) by my senior year of HS. Only twice in Navy quarters, one of them a WWII “temporary” quonset hut. The secret is to inspect the house before moving in and to move out if the house turns out to be unsuitable. Not a whole lot of sympathy here. Mold takes time to grow. If you hag around and watch it grow all over your things that’s your problem.
” mold growing on the rim of a child’s toothpaste tube in a mold-infested bathroom”
As I said, mold takes time to grow, it doesn’t grow overnight. Regular cleaning will prevent buildup. If your kid has mold growing on his toothpaste, he ISN’T BRUSHING HIS TEETH. That mold is only a symptom of their slovenliness.
This is what happens when they turn housing over to a for profit company that is able to write their own performance reports with zero oversight. I think this is going to become a very hot topic in the near future if it hasn’t already, and a few contractors should have to do some time in jail for the crap they have been pulling.
“Zero oversight”? Are you sure there isn’t a legion of DOD Contract Compliance Officers that are, perhaps, not doing their jobs? In my experience working OCONUS, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting 6 of them. PAX terminal seemed to be a popular place for them….