Plans moving ahead to privatize base's military housing

Friday, January 28, 2011
The privatization plan at Mountain Home Air Force Base is tied, in part, to a multi-year project to replace hundreds of its aging housing units with new two-family town homes. The base currently has approximately 1,130 two, three and four bedroom units.

Mountain Home Air Force Base will join a growing list of military installations seeking to transfer ownership of their on-base housing to private contractors.

Community and business leaders in Mountain Home and across the Treasure Valley will get their first look at the initiative during a meeting the morning of Feb. 2 on base.

The agenda includes an overview of the base's housing privatization project and direct interaction with the national development teams that expressed interest in this project.

The base is one of six military installations in the northwestern corner of the United States waiting to proceed with their phase of the military's ongoing housing privatization plan.

This phase of the plan involves 4,549 military housing units at Mountain Home, Minot Air Force Base, Grand Forks Air Force Base and Cavalier Air Force Station, N.D.; Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.; and Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.

Transferring control of military housing areas to contractors is part of the Military Housing Privatization Initiative, or MHPI, established by Congress in 1996.

"The MHPI was designed and developed to attract private sector financing, expertise and innovation to provide necessary housing faster and more efficiently than traditional military construction processes would allow," the Pentagon reported.

The Defense Department currently owns 257,000 family housing units on- and off-base.

"About 60 percent need to be renovated or replaced because they have not been sufficiently maintained or modernized over the last 30 years," the Pentagon said. "Using the traditional military construction approach, it would cost taxpayers nearly $16 billion and take 20 years to solve this problem. Furthermore, traditional military construction requires contractors to adhere to military specifications, which make projects significantly more costly than building to market standards."

"Housing privatization shifts the renovation, construction, operations and maintenance responsibilities of family housing to the private sector, whose expertise is to build and manage housing assets," according to officials with the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. "For the Air Force, it results in the construction of more housing built to market standards for less money than through the military construction process."

Commercial construction is typically faster and less costly than military construction, Air Force officials added.

Mountain Home's privatization plan is tied, in part, to a multi-year project to replace hundreds of its aging housing units with new two-family town homes. Current information from the base housing office puts its military housing area at approximately 1,130 two, three and four bedroom units.

Local officials expected to finish the privatization process this spring, according to information released by the base housing office. The plan seeks to align the base with the Air Force's goals "to provide well-maintained, competitive housing units to meet the needs of our airmen."

The private developer selected to own, maintain and operate the base's housing area would likely enter into a 50-year lease with the base. As part of this deal, the contractor would receive a "rent check" of sorts from each military family living there. Instead of receiving basic allowance for housing that airmen living off base collect, those living on base would have that money go directly to the contractor. In addition, on-base families would draw a utility allowance that would fully cover these expenses if they remain energy conscious, Air Force officials said.

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