A top Department of Defense priority, and among the most important aspects of our service members’ quality of life, is the quality of their housing. About a third of our personnel live in DoD-owned housing…much of it substandard.

The DoD owns about 300,000 housing units. Approximately 200,000 units are old and in need of extensive repair. However, using traditional military construction practices and funding, it would take 30 years and $16 billion dollars to improve them to an acceptable condition.

The DoD’s Military Housing Privatization Initiative was signed into law in 1996 and provides powerful new tools to address this problem.

This initiative helps DoD decrease expenses and eliminate traditional costs by revising the way we fund and build housing.

The initiative also provides incentives to the private sector for assistance, and leverages private sector financing.

As the Performance Scorecard for Military Housing Privatization shows, we’ve made a great deal of progress. Over 1,000 units were privatized in 1998.

We’re working on privatizing an additional 13,000 units this year…

…and more than 30,000 units by the year 2000. Through privatization, we’ll improve the standard of living for our service members, and that helps us attract and retain top-quality personnel.