Readers share their housing horror stories - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Readers share their housing horror stories

Rats and roaches and … angry hornets? Oh, my. Whoever said “there’s no place like home” probably didn’t have to deal with those roommates — not to mention mold, appliances gone haywire or deadly radon gas.

We asked for your horror stories from living in base housing and got an earful. Here are the best — or, more accurately, the worst — of your submissions.

Your letters

This stings

We had [an awful] smell coming from an outlet in our younger son’s bedroom in the base housing at Hanscom last summer. We called the housing office and they sent over a maintenance technician. He cut out a 2-inch square piece of drywall. As he began cutting the wall several really angry hornets flew out of the hole and stung him. He started yelling “Bees, bees, bees!” and bolted out of the room and down the stairs. It was scary and funny because he is a big burly man and nothing scares him.

[He] returned with two cans of wasp spray and emptied the cans into the hole. The smell went away for a day or two, but then came back. Again maintenance came over. As they began cutting the wall more angry hornets started flying out. The maintenance guys sprayed the hornets, killing as many as possible. When they returned to our son’s bedroom and began widening the hole, they found a two-foot by four-foot hornet nest behind the wall of the bedroom! Inside were literally hundreds of dead hornets.

— Maj. David B. Long

In the foundation

At a previous base, I discovered that my house was infested with a roach-looking insect. After spraying a few different areas I discovered thousands of them living in the foundation.

— Staff Sgt. David R. Carlson

Constant mold

My husband and I were stationed at Hickam AFB from 2005-2008. The ants infiltrated cereal, sugar, rice … pretty much all pantry items. The roaches would hide in shoes or fly around inside the house. I learned the hard way to shake my boots out each morning before I put them on. The mold issues were a constant as well.

— Staff Sgt. Linda J. Grunwald

Going ratty

When I lived in Southside Housing at Patrick AFB (1998-2000) I had rats living inside my house.

They would tear up items in the garage and I could hear them scampering in the attic through out the night. The problem was not solved until I PCS’d.

— Chief Master Sgt. David A. Polon

Mold, bad toilet, cockroaches

At the security forces academy on Lackland AFB, Texas, several of the dorms, including my own, had large spots of black mold growing on the walls and ceiling, a toilet that would only flush with the use of a coat hanger, and cockroaches crawling out of the bathroom.

— Senior Airman Alan R. Rowswell

Pipe woes

We moved into a brand new house. First the sink upstairs starting leaking and I called housing and they said it was OK. Then a few weeks later my living room ceiling caved in from the water damage. Second they built these houses over the old pipes and didn’t replace them, so my sewer backed up and came through my washer drain and then came through my living room wall!

Third, our houses are starting to shift and sink. Our back patios have sunk in and the houses are starting to shift off their foundation.

— April Williamson

Ants, spiders

Since living in our house we have had nothing but problems. The sad part is this house is only eight years old. We started getting ants in February, it continued on until July, they kept coming back and the housing office just kept brushing us off. It took them weeks but they finally came out to our home to spray. Thankfully we don’t have any right now, and are really hoping they don’t come back. We also have a problem with hobo spiders, which are very large and poisonous. I have a nine-month-old daughter and I am very afraid they will bite her, there isn’t really much we can do to get rid of them and housing won’t help us with it. After this experience I don’t believe we will ever live in base housing again.

— Krystine Stephenson

Running away

My wife and I were PCSed from England to Ft. Dix in 1988. Being Air Force, we were eligible to live on Ft. Dix or McGuire AFB. We were in line behind a lady at the Ft. Dix housing office that was screaming about the raw sewage that was coming up out of her kitchen and bathroom sinks from the adjacent units. We couldn’t get to the McGuire housing office fast enough.

— Roger W. Yoder

Water bug troubles

I live on Randolph and the “water bugs” are terrible. We bought some stuff to kill them, but instead it seems like they are multiplying. The base housing is supposed to be “historical” but if you ask me, they should be torn down.

— Tamika Tyus

Neighbors’ roaches were a problem

We moved into our three-bedroom house on Scott AFB in March 2008, part of a duplex. We didn’t have any problems with the house until summertime. All of a sudden we were getting roaches, but we got sprayed and eventually they went away. Fast forward to this summer, our bug problem started up again but this time it was horrible. We’d have to get up a few times a night because my three-year-old would start screaming because a roach would be crawling on her ceiling. They were coming out of her vents. One night, I found a roach in my bed. It was so disgusting. My husband went to turn the light on one night and 15 cockroaches scattered.

We had a suspicion that it was the people we were attached to because their grass was probably three feet high, but we weren’t sure. Sure enough though, the housing office came over to give her a notice about her grass and they could smell her house from the outside so they gave her a 48-hour notice and then they went in to check her house. We got a phone call a few days later from the housing office “highly suggesting that we move,” and they were going to pay for it. Not realizing how bad it was, my husband and I picked out a house that we could have in a month when the people moved out. Had we known how bad it was we would have moved the next day.

Come to find out, our neighbor had not done a maintenance call in over five years. She had probably thousands of cockroaches in her house. Eventually the smell from her house started coming through our laundry room. The outside of the house was almost just as bad. What we thought was a line of ants walking back and forth was actually cock roaches.

When we moved, they had to bug bomb our house one day, pack the next day, then bomb the truck with our furniture in it. What an ordeal! We still have roaches coming out of our furniture here once in a while, but obviously it’s better than it was.

— Valerie Hughes

Rat in the sewer system

In the early 1990s while residing in officer housing at Hickam AFB we noticed that our dishwasher fill hose had been chewed through. Housing maintenance came out and replaced the dishwasher hose. Shortly after that incident every time we used the oven we were met with a strange, strong, unpleasant odor. For over a week we couldn’t figure out what the problem was but finally convinced Housing maintenance to bring us a new stove. When they hauled the old one out to their truck and set it down on the truck’s lift gate, out ran a rat which had gotten into the house, apparently through the sewer system, which means it could have only come up through one of the toilets.

The housing maintenance folks told us that there had been a shortage of whatever they put into the sewer system to keep down the rat population but, although that problem had been fixed, it didn’t make it any easier to use the toilets in the house wondering when or if another rodent could pop up.

—Col. Ronne Mercer (Ret.)

From the Air Force Times forums

No heat

We had no heat in base housing at Eielson for two and a half days last winter. It was roughly -35 [degrees] outside at this time. We were real close to getting a hotel room downtown until things warmed up at home. We had to go to the BX and spend $100 on space heaters and turn the oven on in the kitchen just to keep warm while they worked on it.

— alaskaresident

Radon issues

I lived on base at Andersen AFB, and had to live with radon gas problems the whole three years we were there. The legal limit in the U.S. (mainland) is around 3 or 4 [parts per million]. Our house had nearly 28 ppm. It was the equivalent of smoking eight packs of cigarettes a day.

— Matai

DISCUSS: Your housing horror stories