7: Military Housing
Privatization of Military Housing (DOD) Other Information:
THE PROBLEM About 20 percent of the nation’s military families live in inadequate housing. • Inadequate Military Family Housing.
Last year the military services identified about 177,000 of the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) 290,000 military family housing
units as inadequate. DoD estimates that fixing this problem with traditional military construction funding would cost about
$16 billion and take over 20 years. • Excess Military Family Housing Units. Last year, the military services identified that
they maintain 9,000 out of 290,000 housing units that they do not need, and indications are that there are even more excess
units in DoD’s inventory. Building and maintaining unneeded housing units diverts funding from higher priority defense needs.
THE EXPECTED NEAR–TERM RESULTS • DoD is executing the 2001 enacted appropriations that provided funding to support eliminating
11,000 inadequate housing units through new construction, renovation, and public-private partnerships ("privatization"), more
than double the total units privatized between 1996 and 2000. • The 2002 amended DoD budget funds construction and renovation
of 6,363 housing units and privatization of 28,174 units, of which about 18,600 are currently inadequate. So in all, with
the 2002 budget, about 25,000 in-adequate units will be upgraded. • DoD should issue an up-dated housing requirements process
to ensure that DoD relies on private-sector housing first for its housing needs. • DoD reports current lifecycle costs for
private-public partnerships are five to ten percent less than the traditional construction projects. THE EXPECTED LONG-TERM
RESULTS • If DoD continues using public-private partnerships to privatize housing at the rate in the 2002 budget, DoD should
be able to eliminate all inadequate military family housing units by 2008, two years before its original goal of 2010. Increased
use of public-private partnerships could accelerate progress even more. • Secretary Rumsfeld has observed that housing is
not a core military competency and "can be performed more efficiently in the private sector." To move in that direction, the
percentage of military families living in private housing should be increased, thereby reducing the government-owned housing
requirement.
Objective(s):
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