Old Housing Hurts Re-enlistments, Pentagon Says : Defense: Situation reduces readiness by encouraging turnover, according to critics. Rebuilding is an option.

After decades of neglect, U.S. military housing has so deteriorated that Pentagon leaders say it is discouraging soldiers from re-enlisting and thereby handicapping the nation’s military readiness.

Many barracks and family apartments, built soon after World War II, are cramped and suffer from peeling lead-based paint, hazardous asbestos, cracked foundations, corroded pipes or faulty heating and cooling systems.

More than half the family housing is rated inadequate, and Defense Secretary William J. Perry cites the poor condition of military housing as the number one complaint he hears from soldiers on visits to bases.

“If you ever drove up with your kid to a college with that kind of housing, you’d never leave your kid,” John Hamre, the Pentagon’s comptroller, has been telling congressional and news media audiences around Washington. “It’s pathetic.”

But at a time of shrinking budgets, Pentagon officials have come up with only some token extra millions of dollars to throw at a problem requiring billions to fix. So Perry is casting about for creative off-budget schemes. His main notion, still largely untested, is to establish a system for attracting private investment to help rebuild or replace America’s military housing.

So passionate has Perry become about the subject that the former aerospace entrepreneur--remembered as an undersecretary in the Jimmy Carter Administration for such high-tech innovations as stealth technology and the cruise missile--is now determined to leave his mark by cleaning up the more mundane housing mess.

“When I leave here, I want to look back at a handful of legacies--things that I’ve done that I’m proud of, that will be sustained and carried on--and this is going to be one of them,” Perry said in an interview.

Asked about the apparent irony of appealing for new, improved housing even as another round of base closings is under way, Pentagon authorities say the shutdowns have exacerbated the overall housing shortage. Moreover, with much of the closure process now behind them, Defense Department officials say the way is open for enlisting private developers who had been spooked by the uncertainty of the closings.

On Capitol Hill, where strong bipartisan support exists for better military housing, Perry has run into one complication. His emphasis on the U.S. problem is undermining his parallel effort to continue building new homes for former Soviet military officers, part of a U.S. program to finance elimination of nuclear missile bases in Moscow’s onetime empire.

Much American military housing remains in decent shape. Some quite handsome buildings, with remodeled interiors and attractive surroundings, are home to senior officers. And many bases feature well-kept smaller housing units.

But the norm is something else.

Although no definitive Pentagon standard for adequate housing exists, the Defense Department reports that about 60% of the 375,000 on-base family housing units are inadequate--and there are long waiting lists at most bases even for those homes. About one-fourth of the military’s 510,000 “barracks spaces” are rated substandard, with World War II-vintage gang latrines still common.

Even some top-tier combat forces, like the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division based here at Ft. Bragg, live in overcrowded rooms with pockmarked walls, rickety lockers, swaying bunks and dim lighting.

“We’d like to give our soldiers something better than tiles falling on their heads and air conditioning that doesn’t work,” said Lt. Col. Charles Jacoby, a battalion commander in the 82nd.

Pentagon officials cite several factors to explain how housing became a crisis. One involves the shift over the past two decades from a conscript force to an all-volunteer military, which led to a jump from 40% to 60% in the proportion of married service members.

But the availability of family housing has increased little since the 1970s. Most of the Ronald Reagan Administration’s surge in defense spending went for new weapon systems rather than bricks and mortar. Some military housing was upgraded in Europe, then central to Cold War defenses, but those facilities now are being closed.

“Even during the 1980s, when we had a defense budget buildup, there was little or no attention paid to this housing problem,” Perry said. “I think it just didn’t strike them that it was an important problem.”

The relocation in the United States of U.S. troops formerly based abroad has exacerbated the shortage, as has the closing of numerous domestic bases that offered at least some decent housing.

Styles, too, have changed. Today’s soldiers, like other Americans, expect more privacy and space than their counterparts several decades ago. One bath for three or four bedrooms might have been satisfactory in the 1950s; now, military families want not only more bathrooms, but more living and storage space, various appliances, parking for at least two cars and other amenities.

Despite numerous, limited renovation efforts, military officials say maintenance has tended to be more reactive than preventive. Besides, only so much can be done for some eroding structures.

“This place is like an old car; it’s continually breaking down,” said Sgt. Maj. Sam Chapman of the 16th Military Brigade, quartered at Ft. Bragg in a 1920s-era barracks with broken plumbing, unreliable heating and never enough hot water. “We’re constantly putting in work orders, but the only way to fix things is to tear the place down and build a new barracks.”

Under an initiative announced last fall, the Pentagon plans to spend $450 million a year for the next six years to improve on-base housing, raise allowances for off-base living and provide more child care and other family support services. But even with these extra funds--on top of increased spending on housing by the services--Pentagon officials expect to modernize only 14% of the family housing stock over the next six years and only one in three substandard barracks.