By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer

The idea may not be new, but it’s getting close to home.

Privatizing housing for military families became an official priority in 1996. That year, the U.S. Department of Defense enacted its Military Housing Privatization Initiative as part of the Defense Authorization Act.

Now, after more than a decade of working out the bugs in base housing projects around the country, the program may be reaching into the tri-county area.

“Basically this is a matter of the DoD outsourcing the housing,” said Steve Campbell, a civil engineer with the 437th Civil Engineer Squadron. “How it works is, we’d give a developer a 50-year lease to come in and construct houses and deal with upkeep and management of the property, and the developer gets compensated by the military from the serviceman’s housing allowance.”

Campbell said that the process is “very long and drawn out,” but he has a team heading to San Antonio to learn more.

“That in itself is a big step, to get the ball rolling,” he said.

According to DoD documents, about a third of service personnel live in military housing, much of it considered substandard. Of the roughly 300,000 housing units owned by the DoD, about 200,000 of them are old and in need of extensive repair. However, using traditional military construction practices and funding, it would take 30 years and $16 billion dollars to rebuild them so that they’re in acceptable condition.

The privatization initiative is designed to help DoD cut expenses and eliminate traditional costs by revising the way it funds and builds housing. The program also provides incentives to the private sector for assistance and leverages private-sector financing.

While the privatization initiative could offer a lucrative opportunity for developers, there are some concerns about the program’s efficacy. The Government Accountability Office, the fiscal watchdog of the government, was asked to address how each military service and DoD manages, funds and assesses the performance of its lodging programs to meet short- and long-term needs.

In a report released earlier this year, the GAO found that each military service takes its own approach to managing and funding its lodging programs, but current DoD lodging guidance does not establish performance measures to assess program effectiveness. In addition, it is difficult to determine total program costs across the services because some of the data reported is estimated or not collectable.

Overall, the GAO found that lodging privatization could increase costs to the government by about $75 million per year through increased room rates if all lodging facilities in the United States are privatized, with those costs borne by the operations and maintenance and military personnel appropriation accounts.

Despite the GAO’s caution, the DoD remains determined to offload the task of housing its personnel and their families.

“The major benefit is that the DoD gets out of the housing business,” said Campbell. “You’ll have a contractor come in and manage the housing, and that will save military construction dollars for projects other than housing. I believe if it’s managed right, the government will not end up short.”

Campbell said the Hunley Park housing is considered viable for the initiative.

“Our project isn’t that old, and we’ve done a good job maintaining and repairing it,” he said.

The Air Force is completing a $16.9 million renovation on the housing area.

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