Private duplexes are located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. The Department of Defense announced Monday the implementation of a feedback system for privatized military housing after reports of deplorable housing conditions at some sites. Photo courtesy of Air Force

The Housing Feedback System is intended to increase transparency and accountability in housing construction, the agency said in a press release.

Ideally, this should enable tenants to receive an expedited response from their privatized landlords.

The system is intended to complement and not replace existing processes for submitting maintenance order requests.

“The Department of Defense has a moral obligation to ensure the spaces our Soldiers and their families live in are healthy, functional and resilient,” said Deborah G. Rosenblum, assistant secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. “This new feedback system is a critical step to ensure transparent and timely responses to residents’ concerns and is consistent with Secretary (Lloyd) Austin’s priority of taking care of our people. We are focused on putting our people’s experiences at the center of all our work.”

The system can be accessed at https://www.dhfs.mil.

The agency provides approximately 250,000 apartments for military personnel and their families.

Johny Dudek described the poor conditions to Mother Jones before he left the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, as an Army sergeant.

“These houses are not taken care of – they are held together with popsicle sticks and chewing gum,” Dudek said. “Because despite our immense military budget, our government has sold the upkeep of these houses – the care of our soldiers and their families – to (companies) that do a minimum of work for a maximum of profit.”

In 1996, Congress approved the Military Housing Privatization Initiative to improve the condition and quality of the housing stock.

In 2020, a draft law was passed on tenants’ rights in the privatization of military housing.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Defense released its Resilient and Healthy Defense Communities Strategy, “which is intended to guide the Department’s actions to improve the built and natural environment on defense installations in the coming years.”

In 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the barracks that housed some military personnel were in poor condition. The report described sewage backups and nonfunctional firefighting systems.

“The poor living conditions in these facilities affect the quality of life of soldiers and undermine their readiness and mission,” the report concluded. “Improving conditions in the barracks and addressing the quality of life and morale issues associated with the poor conditions has multiple dimensions – including funding, oversight, and collaboration – and addressing these issues will require Department of Defense action in multiple areas.”

According to the report, the Department of Defense had a backlog of at least $137 billion in deferred maintenance costs in fiscal year 2020.

“The findings of this report are disgraceful and troubling for the future of our armed forces,” said U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, after the report was released. “Our soldiers deserve a safe place to live and work. Failure to meet this basic requirement will harm readiness and discourage recruitment and retention.”