Publicly Released: October 3, 2022
The objective of this evaluation was to determine the extent of the DoD’s compliance with provisions in the FY 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) related to health, safety, and environmental hazards in privatized military family housing.
We determined that DoD officials have taken steps to implement the FY 2020 NDAA provisions related to health, safety, and environmental hazards in privatized military family housing. Specifically, to implement the FY 2020 NDAA provisions, DoD officials:
- issued policies to require installation MHO officials to perform the FY 2020 NDAA oversight provisions;
- issued policies to require the FY 2020 NDAA provisions in future legal agreements; and
- sought agreement from landlords to voluntarily include FY 2020 NDAA provisions retroactively in existing legal agreements.
However, despite DoD officials’ attempts to seek agreement from the landlords, not all 14 landlords have agreed to voluntarily include three FY 2020 NDAA provisions retroactively in existing legal agreements. The FY 2020 NDAA provisions include tenants’ rights to receive 7-year maintenance histories, enter into a dispute resolution process, and have their basic allowance for housing payments withheld from the landlord pending completion of the dispute resolution process. Specifically, two landlords, Boyer Hill Military Housing and Burlington, have not voluntarily made two FY 2020 NDAA provisions available to tenants. Additionally, three landlords, Capital Real Estate, JL Properties, Miller-Valentine Group, and United Communities, have not voluntarily made three FY 2020 NDAA provisions available to tenants.
This occurred because the landlords are not legally required to retroactively include the three FY 2020 NDAA provisions in existing legal agreements. According to an August 2020 DoD Office of the General Counsel memorandum, landlords are not legally required to retroactively include the provisions unless they sign a new or renewed legal agreement after the date the FY 2020 NDAA was enacted into law, in December 2019. As a result, tenants whose landlords refused to retroactively include the FY 2020 NDAA provisions in existing legal agreements do not have access to the same rights as tenants whose landlords voluntarily agreed to make the provisions fully available.
Additionally, according to DoD officials, installation MHO officials are required to track and document the implementation of the FY 2020 NDAA oversight provisions related to health, safety, and environmental hazards in eMH. However, we found that installation MHO officials at certain installations cannot track and document their FY 2020 NDAA oversight activities in eMH or do not have access to the full functionality of eMH.
This occurred because Army and Air Force officials did not populate eMH with all privatized military family housing records, as required by the 2014 USD(A&S) policy memorandum. Additionally, Army and Air Force officials did not initiate the development of the software needed to connect landlord third-party vendor information management systems. Therefore, eMH program management officials could not develop the software needed to make eMH fully functional. Furthermore, landlords are not required to connect their third-party vendor information management systems with eMH to share additional data, such as occupancy data, unless the privatized military family housing project legal agreement includes a requirement for data sharing. Instead, DoD officials request that landlords voluntarily connect their third-party vendor information management systems with eMH. Consequently, neither the FY 2020 NDAA nor DoD housing policies, including the 2014 USD(A&S) policy memorandum, could unilaterally require retroactive changes to existing legal agreements. As a result, installation MHO officials at certain installations perform additional work to track and document their oversight of privatized military family housing outside of eMH.