Washington, DC - The Navy is committed to ensuring its Sailors and their families have safe, healthy living quarters and the quality of life they deserve.
“Navy leaders at all levels are actively engaged in advocating for our Sailors and their families,” said Vice Adm. Mary Jackson, commander of Navy Installations Command (CNIC). “Our dedicated government housing teams, installations and region leadership, along with the PPV (Public-Private Venture) partners are committed to improving every resident’s housing experience and for implementing an effective oversight program.”
As part of the effort to fully understand the size and scope of the problem, the Navy has reached out to Sailors and their families through personal contact, town halls, and surveys.
Commanding officers completed 100 percent contact with all Sailors and their families to discuss their housing situation and offer in-home visits to observe potential health, safety and unresolved maintenance issues. As a result of the home visit offer, approximately five percent of Sailors living in PPV family housing, two percent of Sailors living in government family housing, 14 percent of Sailors living in PPV unaccompanied housing, and two percent of Sailors living in government unaccompanied housing requested a command representative visit to their residence. One hundred percent requested visits to PPV and government housing have been completed, which identified 2,034 issues of which 90.8 percent have been resolved.
The Navy will continue to track these work orders, as well as new routine trouble tickets, to completion.
Between Feb. 13-March 7, every Navy installation commander conducted a town hall to hear directly from Sailors and their families about the state of affairs at each housing community and to better understand specific problems that need attention. The town halls, along with the home visits, have shown that a majority of housing complaints are associated with poor workmanship; lack of follow-up or customer service, addressing symptoms rather than root causes; and minimal or absent government engagement and oversight. Installation commanders with PPV housing are in the process of hosting a second round of town halls, but overall, are seeing a much lower attendance rate.
Surveys are another tool the Navy uses to understand the current state of housing. The Navy completed an “out-of-cycle” Resident Satisfaction Survey for Sailors and their families living in both family and unaccompanied PPV housing. CEL & Associates, an independent third party, conducts all Navy surveys. The “out-of-cycle” survey launched April 2 and was completed May 9, with an overall response rate of 22 percent. Despite command emphasis and advertisement through social media, letters, and e-mails, this response rate is lower than previous surveys, which have historically had a 34 to 45 percent response rate.
For residents in government-operated family housing, the Resident Satisfaction Survey runs through June 6, and the survey for unaccompanied Sailors living in government-operated housing runs through June 20. The results of current and past surveys will be analyzed and used to further assess and improve our accompanied and unaccompanied housing programs.
“Our near term objective is to remedy all issues that have been brought forward, and to implement checks and balances, to include trend analysis, which will alert us immediately when an issue is not resolved within the required time and quality benchmarks,” Jackson said. “If you have an issue, please let our housing teams know!”
In an effort to improve alignment and provide oversight, the Navy continues to have active recurring senior level engagement with all PPV partners to ensure they are holding property managers and maintenance professionals accountable for housing quality, responsiveness, and customer service.
The Navy is also performing a comprehensive review of all business agreements to identify opportunities for improved oversight and accountability.
The Navy oversees approximately 116,000 housing units worldwide. About 45,000 units are operated by private partners and 71,000 are government operated.
Going forward, the Navy will continue to ensure oversight and transparency of privatized and government housing through on-going personal contact and resident follow-up, spot checks, town halls, education, increased leadership engagement, and continued stakeholder communication. Additionally, the Navy is an active participant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense led Bill of Rights and universal lease initiatives.
