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Air Force struggling to fill vacant housing

The Air Force is struggling to get families to live on base and is turning to single airmen, military retirees and even civilians with no government connections to fill the empty homes that now are nearly all under the control of private contractors.

Airmen with families live in 83 percent of the residences, 9 percent lower than the goal set by the service. Single airmen, civilians, military retirees, Reserve and Guard members and families of contractors make up another 5 percent, bringing the overall occupancy rate to 88 percent.

The percentage of civilians is much higher at bases where contractors built too many houses. At Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, for example, civilians rent 35 percent of the installation’s 402 privatized residences.

Of 52,203 houses servicewide, 70 percent are managed by developers and management companies. The businesses have built or renovated 14,984 residences and demolished 13,893 old or substandard units.

The other 30 percent of units will be turned over to developers within a few years. The Air Force still manages the housing on 19 of 62 installations, including Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.; Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.; and Charleston Air Force Base, S.C.

The Air Force doesn’t plan to privatize dormitories for single airmen; the Navy, though, has its housing for single sailors privately managed.

A top housing official for the Air Force attributes the low occupancy rates to overbuilding and airmen wanting their own homes. The Air Force can’t require families to live on U.S. bases.

In the early part of the decade, easily available financing helped many airmen buy real estate, said Kathleen Ferguson, deputy assistant Air Force secretary for installations, who lived for several years in military housing as an Air Force wife. Whether the recession persuades more airmen to move on base remains to be seen, she said.

The overbuilding came about because the Air Force required developers to build units for 100 percent of the estimated need, according to Ferguson. Because of units going empty, however, contractors now build for 80 percent.

Besides reining in construction, the Air Force is trying to improve its housing image with families by getting the word out to married Air Force couples about the financial benefits of living on base, as well as working with developers to standardize the leasing process from base to base, Ferguson said.

Under the rules for traditional military housing, two airmen married to each other and living in an Air Force-owned house can’t collect Basic Allowance for Housing.

When the housing is privatized, however, both airmen collect BAH, Ferguson said. The monthly rent payment is the equivalent of the highest ranking airman’s BAH. The other airman gets to pocket his or her BAH payment.

The Air Force annually surveys housing residents about their satisfaction. Ferguson described the results as favorable but didn’t provide details.

Some airmen are unhappy with their on-base housing. They weren’t shy about telling their stories — a few new, a few from years past — to Air Force Times. There was an assortment of complaints: mold, cracks in walls and ceilings, bugs, gas leaks, lead paint and the perennial problem of too little space.

For a long time, airmen have wanted more room for their families than what the typical 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom military home offers.

Ferguson recalled she, her officer husband and two young children managed to get by in a 1,200-foot home, but larger families with teenagers felt squeezed.

Tech. Sgt. Kenneth Thomas has a family of five and knows about a teen living in cramped quarters.

“My 16-year-old son’s room was 7.5 feet by 11 feet. Most walk-in closets are bigger,” Thomas said of the 1960s-era home he was assigned at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

Thomas moved his family off base after finding a five-bedroom home for $250 more a month than his rent at Maxwell.

A 20 percent boost in BAH rates over the last 10 years made it easier for Thomas and other service members to live in their communities. Today, BAH pays 100 percent of projected housing costs.

The Air Force began its privatization push in 2002, Ferguson said.

Money drove changes

In the mid-1990s, the Defense Department and Congress agreed there wasn’t enough government money to replace outdated housing and maintain other residences. The services turned to private companies to pay for new housing and renovations. The services promised BAH dollars would repay the developers’ investments.

When the Air Force began privatization in 2002, only military housing that wasn’t part of the main base could be taken over and contracts were signed one base at a time.

As the service grew comfortable with privatization, it allowed developers to take on projects anywhere on a base. Instead of agreeing to one base at a time, the Air Force offered several bases in a package because larger deals were more attractive to developers.

In its contracts, the Air Force sets out building requirements and a timeline for replacing units. For assuming all the construction and maintenance costs, the developers receive the local monthly BAH rate for each occupied residence. For example, an airman eligible for a $1,000 BAH payment would pay $1,000 to live in a privatized on-base house. Over 50 years, the developer could make a profit.

Air Force privatization efforts took a hit in May 2007, when the company responsible for 3,689 residences at four installations — Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass.; Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark.; Moody Air Force Base, Ga.; and Patrick Air Force Base, Fla. — closed.

American Eagle Communities LLC abandoned more than 100 partially built houses and dozens more units stayed vacant, caught up in legal tangles. Air Force officials from the Pentagon found themselves at the bases trying to explain to angry subcontractors why they hadn’t been paid.

Seven months ago, in April, HP Communities took over the projects.

So far, Ferguson said, HP Communities is living up to its promises.

New management, new style

Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., whose district includes Little Rock, heard complaints from all parties — subcontractors to base residents — when American Eagle was in charge. Since the change in management, the phones have been quiet.

“They seemed to have turned around 180 degrees from what they were,” Snyder said.

HP Communities estimates it should take about 40 months to bring the four bases’ residences up to Air Force standards, said Robin Vaughn, executive vice president of Hunt Development Group.

If newly arrived airmen have doubts about private housing based on what they’ve heard before, Vaughn knows how to reassure them.

“We go out and show them tangible changes,” Vaughn said.

In the wake of American Eagle’s failure, the Air Force changed its contracting process, Ferguson said. Now, all deals and financing must be approved at the Air Staff level. Before, base officials with limited real estate knowledge and experience had signed off on some of the contracts.

Stories about the construction problems and broken promises make some airmen leery of seeing their homes turned over to private firms.

Col. Joe Schwarz, a civil engineer on Ferguson’s staff, oversaw the privatization of the housing at Los Angeles Air Force Base two years ago when he was air base wing commander.

A town hall meeting brought out the skeptics.

“There were a lot of rumors out there,” Schwarz said.

It wasn’t the promise to build a 4,000-square-foot community center or to make renovations that won over the base residents.

“The developer said, ‘‘We’ll cut your grass,’” Schwarz said. “After that they had no questions.”