Army wants to privatize
military housing in Hawaii

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

At Fort Hood, soldiers said there were too many two-bedroom units and not enough four-bedroom homes.

At Fort Meade, military families wanted neighborhood centers built around a swimming pool, and Fort Lewis' young soldiers liked the idea of being located in second-floor apartments built around a town center.

So those ideas were incorporated into the military's latest housing initiative, which began six years ago. It calls upon private-sector capital and expertise to build, operate and manage military family housing.

The Air Force began the process designed to privatize half of the family housing units at Hickam Air Force Base last year. Its current plans call for retaining 1,284 housing units while privatizing 1,356.

The Army wants to convert all of its 7,700 housing units on Oahu over the next five years.

The Navy and Marine Corps hope to privatize a majority of their more than 6,600 units sometime late next year if it can get congressional approval.

The Pentagon's goal is to eliminate all inadequate housing by 2007. For soldiers in Hawaii, that literally means all of the on-base housing units on Oahu.

Lt. Col. Floyd Quintana, director of the Army's public works operations here, told reporters yesterday that he personally is "ashamed of what I ask our soldiers to live in."

His views also are mirrored by Command Sgt. Major Harry Wimbrough, one of the chief enlisted soldiers on the island.

Besides describing Army housing here as "substandard," Wimbrough added, "We are asking soldiers to live in housing which wouldn't be considered low-income housing in a big city."

Patrick Batt, program manager for the Army's housing rehabilitation program here, said that "70 percent of Army family housing here is inadequate." Batt said the Army will replace existing units only, meaning thousands of soldiers will still use off-base housing.

Batt will hold an industry forum on Aug. 28 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village to explain how the Army plans to solicit the best-qualified partner to initiate what it calls a "community development and management program" to improve and operate Army housing on Oahu for the next 50 years.

Batt, Hawaii project manager for the residential communities initiative, acknowledged that the minimum qualifications for a developer to bid on what officials have described as "the biggest and richest housing project in the Army" may be out of reach for local concerns based on what was done on the mainland.

"That may mean that it may take a consortium of a developer, management company and a bank to put together such a package," Batt said.

"However, a lot of the smaller jobs could easily be subcontracted to local small businesses."

Hawaii will be the 17th housing project undertaken by the Army in partnership with private enterprise.

There are more than 11,000 married soldiers living in Hawaii who are eligible for housing, Batt said, and earlier this year they were surveyed on what they wanted in family housing.

"They were concerned about security and privacy," Batt said.

"Soldiers wanted to know that their families would be well taken care of when they were deployed in places like Bosnia."

Those concerns and desired amenities will be passed on to the developer. Under the Army's RCI program, the basic housing allowance a soldier gets for housing would be paid directly to the developer.

Batt estimated that soldiers in Hawaii draw more than $100 million annually in housing allowance, which could provide a lucrative cash flow for any large developer.