On February 13, CBS This Morning featured a report on the substandard conditions found in military housing. Later that day the Senate Armed Services Committee was going to hold a hearing on the matter. A Navy wife, Shannon Razsadin, was scheduled to testify on behalf of the Military Family Advisory Network.
The report stated that the network had received over 7,000 reports of problems with military housing. The problems involve lead paint, lead in the water, termites, roaches, mold and other issues. These problems exist at base housing across the United States.
For the report they interviewed families from Fort Meade in Maryland and Camp Pendleton in California. If you go to the CBS This Morning website (www.cbsnews.com/cbs-this-morning) and search the topic of military housing, you can view the report from that day.
This is not a new problem. The Pentagon investigated this issue four years ago. Tenants cannot go to local jurisdictions to get help to resolve problems because the housing is on federal land. They can’t withhold rent payments because the rent is being paid by the federal government directly to companies like Corvias Military Living, a private property company that is supposed to be managing military housing complexes.
The Pentagon pays over $4 billion in rent subsidies each year. Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
To express your opinion or to question your elected Illinois Senators, you can go to Senator Duckworth’s website (www.duckworth.senate.gov/connect/email-tammy) and/or Senator Durbin’s website (www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email) to ask if they have any suggestions on how to guarantee that military families are not forced to live in substandard housing. Thank you for your interest.
