Participate in the questions and there is a formal way i would ask unanimous consent and on Committee Member be allowed to participate in the hearing after the subCommittee Memberofthe sun opportunity to ask questions. Is there any objection . There being none, if none, you are recognized at the appropriate time for five minutes of questions. With that, but the committee will come to order. Ladies and gentlemen, i called the committee to order from the Armed Services committee. Since february of this year the committee has been conducting extensive oversight of the program. We first heard about the systemic failures and privatized military Family Housing program from a panel of courageous military spouses who provided graphic and disturbing testimony about lead, mold, exposure, infestations, rude and dismissive House Management and ineffective oversight of the program by the services. Then we heard from the assistant secretaries on their efforts to address the failures of oversight that would privatized military housing crisis. And the plans of the services to continue to make improvements. Today we will hear from five of the private military housing for verse for their perspectives and importantly their plans for bringing thela Family Housing bk to the level of our military families deserve. I also want to makee one thing clear. Why do we do not have all of the privatized military Housing Partners present today, that in no way means that those that are not here or off the hook. We are watching them and expect them to do right by the familier tmilies that they provide services to. Our oversight of this issue will continue and we are watching not only those that are here for those that are not. Heard troubling reports about the organization. Im particularly concerned about the reports of the abusive use of the nondisclosure agreements. Im putting you on notice the committee will be watching and we will not tolerate in any way the abusive problems that we are seeing. Its deeply troubling that still after these months i am getting reports that certain partners the seriousness of the issues facing our military families and frankly a lack of respect for the servicemembers and their families. They deserve better. While its clear that they have been working to improve conditions and processes since we first heard from the families in february, this committee and many of our members still hear from concerned military families continue to struggle with getting quality resolution is a maintenance concern and some of the unprofessional Property Management staff. There is work yet to be done and we will continue to follow up on these issues until they are resolved to the satisfaction of the military families and the ilcommittee. One of the things that has permeated the discussion around the privatized Family Housing is the issue of ineffective management particularly at the installation level. The symptoms of the problem have taken many forms including disrespectful Customer Service personnel, an experienced maintenance teams performing low quality maintenance and consequences resulting from wrong contract performance. Weve heard about the department of Defense Initiatives to address these issues because daytoday management ibut becan the purview of the private part or, im interested in hearing what you have to say about what you are doing to change the culture at the installation level. As military services have committed to their oversight role, they are working to improve the process and refine the metrics that are used to measure the performance of each m housing project. I am looking forward to hearing from our witnesses with the degree to which they are cooperating with thesehe dinitiatives and the steps they are taking to ensure that housing enterprise is as transparent as possible. Counterproductive practices such as closing Maintenance Work orders before the problems are resolved in order to artificially bolster the closure statistics or asking them to sign nondisclosure agreements as a matter of routine when they move out of the unit are simply not acceptable. Youve had enough time to assess and scrutinize the problems and as we move into 2020, the focus now must be on action. Not only must posses be instituted across the enterprise, but you must develop mechanisms to ensure that sustainment of the positive change to ensure they receive highquality housing regardless of where they live. We asked our servicemembers and their families to sacrifice enough in service to their country. We will not accept substandard housing as well. These families deserve better and the committee will demand that they get the best. Thank you so much for joining us and i explained you were in a Committee Markup casting votes. Im sure they were old to my satisfaction. You will be just as satisfi satisfied. Thank you for having this hearing and for being here as mrs. Thank you, everyoneon in the shoving your concern. Today we will hear testimony from the companies that make the privatized military family m housing model work. As someone whose district has almost 40,000 military members an48,000 military membersand lie been deeply troubled by the lack of oversight in the program and our military families deserve better. Our committee has heard significant concerns about insufficient remediation and terrible Customer Service with numerous military installations most recently at the air force base in florida and well worth. We are not going to address them today but theres also been allegations of fraud in extreme cases. According to a survey released earlier this year by the military Family Advisory network, 63 of the respondents that live in my district said the units needed better maintenance, repairs were remediation. Its been described as poor Customer Service. The military housing privatizationn initiative began as publicprivate ventures as the means to modernize housing and improve efficiency and growtimproved efficiency andgror future investments. Oversight is challenging because each military department manages the programs differently and the respective projects are governed by unique agreements. It is a total of 35 projects the navy and marine corps have 15 and airport yesterday to. Oversight is further complicated the army and the navy projects because they are part of his for developers and the limited limid liabilities with both sides investing capital. My hope is that the attention has served as a wakeup call to both of the military departments and the Housing Partners but not the expensive military families. Every dollar wasted and it was mismanagement or incompetence diminishes the longterm viability of the reserve accounts thatil are vital for te future recapitalization. The house and senate both passed significant Bipartisan Legislation in th and the defene bills this year and i look s. Forward to enacting meaningful reform. First and foremost is the tenets bill of rights. Three sent ig report found a pervasive misconception that when the housing was privatized, it was effectively outsourced. But leaders didnt actively engage as theyer might have on other issues based upon the misunderstandings of their authorities. Weve heard that some installation commanders characterized the government as the weaker or 49 partner in the housing agreements. Employing that they have limited means to address the shortcomings. Oversight is a inherently governmental and it is not optional. On some installations there is confusion regarding the identity of the Installation Housing Office and office of the housing part of her. It should be clear to we must reform the Privatized Housing projects. 82018 report highlighted and found the military. The futurfuture sustainment need funding to assist the project sustainability. Im beginning to question the wisdom of the waterfall in the wider recapitalization accounts are only paid after the management partners. I look forward to hearing more about their perspectives on the Program Overall and actions they have taken to address any health and safety concerns and to improve Customer Service. We alsoo appreciate their thoughts on improving the Overall Program going forward. Thank you. The president of the military communities and the ceo of lend lease america coming dictator president facility operations Renovation Construction and president of th wind in theco fy housing. Your testimony will be put into the hearing record in the interest a a of time which we ae limited today because the votes will occur sometime after two or as late a as 2 30. I would ask you to limit your testimony and summarize to three minutes. My. Apologies for the pronunciation. Ranking members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I am the founder and ceo and i am here on behalf of 950 dedicated team members many employeesve are veterans or spouses of active duty military members. The stupid people are generally committed to supporting those theprotect and defend nation. Its my honor to serve in this capacity. When i was first introduced with the Housing Program i was moved by how poorly we as a nation wereit caring for the military personnel and what was the most personal way p of all. When i found th that the compans some 20 years ago we found something to fix the challenges that were fixing the military. After 9 11, a very important j job. Last on the hill in february i said i was sorry in no uncertain terms. I apologize for the issues and some of the residents we are dealing with. I said we would do whatever it takes. Today i want to tell you a few of the things weve done sinc we i apologized nearly ten months ago. Since early 2019 weve been making changes in the effort to get back into the Gold Standard. The Gold Standard service will be known when we have deployed Service Members who are able to speak to their families about what is happening at school and not about ththenthought about ty were experiencing in their housing. What thewith a gurgling of the t defense and strong sense of community that has helped a Better Living environment. We added neighborhood staff to work directly with families of both the Service Call Centers back onto the installations so residents talked to somebody right down the street as opposed to the central coal station and we showed they use their smartphone or laptop to Place Service calls and track progress and let us know if we have gotten the job done right. We established the advocate to work as an ombudsman for those with more challenging issues. From the earlier days of the program it is well understood this to give the Service Members to homes they deserve and the program to operate in a consistent state of the public construction and financing. The housing finances have been based on the homes and building and maintaining homes both new and old and investment in the homes is an investment in the Service Members. That is why we have injected new money into the program 325 million over 2019 with another 150 million prepared for 2020 we are also putting close to 200 million to work from the C Partnership reserves. 675 million altogether at no cost to the government. These investments are used to replace or completely upgrade some of the most challenging homes we maintain more than 16,000 public t16,000 brought ur Energy Standards like air conditioning standards to give residents a better Home Experience while saving nearly 300 million in the course of th0 next 30 years. As someone whos bee been in the program for nearly 20 years i can say from personal experience the homesea we inherited were uninhabitable. Through the programh we were abe to upgrade or replace thousands of over homes in the earlier years and however, ton date 46 of the homes in the military portfolio were built before 1980 and some as old as 70. As we looked into the future theres a lot to be encouraged about some real challenges to deliver the Gold Standard service that costs more each year to maintain and drive constant investment in the homes and renovations. They will continue to work tirelessly to give. There is no higher calling in the industry thank you for the e time it went ove was over to the questions and dialogue. Distinguished members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to be here. We are entrusted t to build quality communities for americas heroes and we take that responsibility very seriously. During the Senate Hearing in february, it became obvious to us there were families living in our homes fo whose voices were t being heard. They lost their trust, we are sorry and we want to get it right. We heard the residents loud and clear and we are focused on rebuilding their trust in us and improving their living experience. Over the past year weve been working diligently on that front. Merst, we recognized Quality Homes in the Resident Services depend on open and regular communication with those of them. We need to hear from all of our military families in order to address their issues. We made a number of improvements to make it easier to communicate with us. In addition we understand maintenance is a critical part of providing Quality Homes and earlier this year it became clear to us we had some room for improvement. Improvement. Is a proud partner of the department of defense to contain over 130,000 people per go mister chairman the issues discussed affect me personally no family much less a military family should be subjected to these living substandarddg Housing Conditions and then what we do to take care of military families but we have more work to do per go as an example 4000 Service Orders per year last monthly process 25000 Service Orders. 97 percent were on time and function however it does mean 3 percent were not effectively processed on time and that is the big issue so mister chairman and members of the oc that is my focus. What can we do to get the number down to assist these families more quickly than we currently are. Firstly we significantly increase customerin service. And to institute n new training modules. Ti for example we instituted for the maintenance people second we introduced the Smart Phone App for all the information including the ability to initiate and track a Service Request the app has doubled over the communities over the last six months. And with those techniques with those ventilation systems. And continuing to invest this includes modules of improved Customer Service and analytics. And finally with the work we have done to be an open and transparent environment with an active and engaged community. With the school and pta model as a benchmark and then you see a strong school. And then to regularly engage to Work Together to have qualityoflife concerns over 400 homes these represent the Advisory Board. The members of this board we believe this initiative is already giving way. Correspondence that i received last night for those military spouses that appeared earlier this year and with the toughest critics and then to benefit the residents on the micro macro level to better serve our military families. At the local and corporate with government offices and then most important need the residents to improve program work and efficacy. Mister chairmann we appreciate sensible solutions. And we commit to be part of the solution. My name is rick taylor president of facility operations and renovation and construction throughout the communities i appreciate the opportunity to testify today. On behalf of the communities i apologize for having short of the high standards the military families deserves. We are working hard to regain the trust and confidence of our residents of military partners it has been a humbling experience we have learned a lot in the ways that we do business with our living experience dash i would like to highlight three transformation efforts now. First we have reorganized this includes president of facility operations that means there is now a president in charge of and responsible for all military housing maintenance activities. The reorganization puts us at the table of the leaders. As a former navy Civil Engineer fully committed to provide a solution we are appointing a Senior Executive to a completely new physician to be responsible that effective change Management Program and second we are transforming the approach to deliver live mandatory conduct training to understand the fortunes of Business Integrity and ethics. We have enhanced Customer Service training to recently appoint a new Vice President of trading and added to our military housing staff00 and making more transparency for the work order request. Third we are improving the mandatory environmental training to employees and increasing monitoring with mold and moisture issues. We are supplemented teams with thirdparty specialist with the Maintenance Company to devise the local twin teams and communication with residents i also want to make myself clear to take the issue of fraud very seriously including the allegation certain members of staff handled work orders and appropriately there already cooperated with department of justice with respect to its own civil investigation into these allegations simultaneously we have instructed the council to lead the investigation across the entire military housing portfolio and engage Price Waterhouse coopers and Accounting Firm to do an extensive review to support our mission and to summarize we have made efforts to transform and strengthen the Management Structure in a strategic and focused and smart way to address customers concerns i am 100 percent committed to the program thank you to members of congress and staff to undertake fy 20 and daa we support these provisions in the house and i believe it will strengthen the program for example we wholeheartedly support the creation of the bill of rights the common lease the uniform old policy uniform resident policy and standardized metrics these are responsible for everybody for department of defense and military providers in the standards and agreedupon prospects to enforce oversight clarify responsibilities and allow everybodys voice to be heard i support thesee efforts and it will be improved because of them. Our customers deserve the veryf best we are determined to deliver for them thank you for your time i look forward to your questions. Chairman Ranking Member and members of the subcommittee on behalf of Lincoln Military Housing thank you for the opportunity to testify before the subcommittee today and the to npresident of our company we welcome the privatization issue and we hope you share our view despite recent setbacks it is a valuable program after managing dod housing with that ability to deliver highquality housing and services to the water nations deserve over the past year the company has listened carefully to the concerns of families have expressed about their housing more than 1200 employees military spouses or have member serving in the military wake up every day to serve our families and daughter and integrity it is obvious some families feel we have come up short as president i apologize to our military families for the times we have failed to live up to expectations. Beginning 2017 we undertook a holistic view to explore how we could improve. We identified and implemented several reforms with two main goals to improve the quality of arms and services to make reforms that reestablish a culture of trust and dialogue with residents im pleased as i sit here today that those reforms are implemented first we work with a military Family Organization over dozens of communities in the pipeline they seek to identify issues before they become problems and try to work with the families to resolve it. Hour on the ground Property Managers are knocking on resident stores just to check in with residents to ask if there are any issues we need to address in addition to addressing issues also helping to reestablish a culture of trust and dialogue. Third in response to communication tools significantly improving our app that they can submit and track work orders they can still call into san diego. We have worked with our partners for Public Health and medical experts involving environmental hazards the army has given us access to doctors and specialistds to help us in our families to understand these are just a few of the reforms we havee undertaken in the process to make other reforms that are several provisions from the nda a azure subcommittee is performing i look forward to work with you in the dod partners for new and creative ways to improve military housing experience in we understand these issues are not just drywall it is a culture of trust with residents with their service to our nation i look forward to your questions and to working with you to address the concerns of the military families. The Committee Members and guests we are scheduling votes about 15 minutes from now. So i will pass on my questions and then take as many colleagues as possible. Thank you for having this hearing and for being herere the first question or two is from your perspective do you have a 51 percent controlling position in the agreements . No. It varies property to property. No sir we do not. The structure they say that but the operating agreements dont call for that. Do you agree that government and the military has a legitimate oversight responsibilitydl for these initiatives . Absolutelys. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes sir. Im sure there are questions about remediation and lack of progress you are making the on the financial side should congress intercede that we restructure these agreements so that reinvestment accounts have to be fullyst paid before everybody else gets paid . That would be a radical departure but it is the kind of reform we may have to look at anything you would like to offe offer. I think as the program is currently structured it is set up so we can continue to invest in investments if allowed to do so working with dod partners i think we can get there without having to go through tremendously radical changes. I do believe an adjustmentic to make sure it is consistent would be of benefit. Congressman it is worth while to say that everybody should be on the table for i consideration we have agreements that would have to be maintained from where it is currently prescribed in the waterfall so that if we didnt disrupt that that we should have that conversation trying to figure out a way. I support that position if there is sufficient capital there are a variety of solutions to do that interest of the debtholders. Lastly for the sake of time. And to make your job easier so the finances work better so the investments of the high quality of scoring if omb . I think if we went back to the beginning of the program and that was rescinded over time so we start with the right program and investment philosophy i but then change the game midstream. So just going back to that original scoring methodology and additional funding sources. I think i agree with that with the additional sources of funding and the other issue of the process and whether it goes up or down that is the basis of accommodation. And how those optics are determined that is the basis of its entirety. Thank you. Anything they could do to createte flexibility to use private sector tools without scoring issues i agree. Presumably to begin shortly we will be off the floor and back here around 230 so we will break without objection. Thank you mister chairman this is an incredibly critical issue in a bipartisan way and the beginning of the work we have done is critically important. And two d again more to the issues we are talking about the first time as the town hall in january a mother showed up bringing pictures of housing they were living in and tell me about with the Health Impact their family at Tinker Air Force base Mister Taylor is your property. Was hoping that was a limited problem and we found out it is not that is why we are here today. With those infestations are rampant across tinker it so outrageous that we are not taking care of servicemembers and families and then to put their lives on the line. And also responsibility for 55 different facilities over 26 statesou 43000 homes and 150,000 people that is not an insignificant impact. Im incredibly disappointed you have failed to live up to your responsibility for takingle care of the people that are living in these houses. It is cheating military families and taxpayers and i have seen it firsthand and my staff and secretary of out force on air force were just out again because their ongoing problems and i wish i could say things are all better but they are not. There has been some progress it seems like every other week there is Something Else that is coming out talking about mold safety hazardd and the week before last on november 20h another report that maintenance records are falsified to get payments that they were not entitled to. This is not an isolated incident there already 65 documented incidences of falsified maintenance records through 2016 and 2017 and novemh report that they are systematically doctored not just at tinker but also to other bases it is a systemic problem and when we have to fix you have a lot of work to do to fix it. The image behind me is one of the homes brought to me by the families living at Tinker Air Force base. Mister taylor my question to you is even with improvement is this a place you would want to live or allow your family to live . Congresswoman that picture is absolutely unacceptable. Thank you i appreciate that. To be this is unconscionable. It will require a lot of effort and getting down to the heart of thegett problem not jut mandates and patching walls and paint makes it look good for a few moments but thats a bandaid on a wound and thats what people have been living with. We have to get to the heart of this issue i spoke to the secretary of the air force earlier today what we talked about was thehe need at the heart of this issue we have to stop putting bandaids on top of wounds and get to the core of the issue percussive next question is will you commit to making whatever investments are necessary for longterm solutions to reorganization and it needs to tear down properties and start over so that we do right by the military members and their families. I alluded to in my remarks. We have made significant changes in the way we are conducting business. With those technical issues in that area all the way up to the top of the organization and that rest on my shoulders. I amn committed and shall be held accountable for the changes we need to make. I will be holding you accountable. And i want to follow up with one final question. With the documents i have seen it appears you earned about four. 3 million in performance bonuses on these properties that is tens of millions of dollars a performanceof bonuses that were paid out while documented evidence it doesnt matter if there was an employee that you falsifiedec maintenance records tens of millions of dollars. I want to know if you will commit to taking every single penny of this money at least that was paid on falsified maintenance recordsmo to invest back to fix the problems of these units. As i mentioned those allegations are quite shocking to us we are undertaking a thorough review we have investigated with outside counsel to investigate that. Department of justice has an investigation with those same issues prick we have committed to providing the results of our findings to the doj and in thee event we are found to have falsified records and we are committed to refunding back to those projects. Further in the event any individuals are found to be at fault of our code of conduct that we take extremely seriously if anybody has strayed from our code of conduct we will take appropriate disciplinary action. I am over time. We will continue to work on thi this. But the confidence our communities and servicemembers have to trust your collective care has been seriously eroded and it will take a lot of work and attrition to get to the root of this. Thank you. In february we had a roundtable with the spouses and military members affected and i found those spouses and soldiers who were there to be extremely professional and i was a little taken aback at a couple of things i dont think our base commanders takes this issue serious enough and that face command to allow these things to happen but the primary issue that got my attention was the complexity of the landlordtenant lawyers of extremely large corporations that you represent handed to a who quite honestly is just out of high school in many instances. When you hand the servicemembers a contract with those provisions and mediation they are designed to have the impact of servicemembers and families that said if they take you to mediation, if thatsof their only course of action to resolve the issue and they dont win, then they have to pay your legal fees. Are these provisions still in your contracts . To the best of my knowledg knowledge, we have been adapting their provisions h to not have any forms of that type of language of intimidation or to provide renumeration back to us as a company if the suit was filed. All forms are under review and industry is working on a new form. Thats not yes or no so i will assume you still have those intimidation provisionsum. To the best of my knowledge they do not exist. Existm not aware they but we have never pursued recovery of fees from residents. They exist but we are the process to remove those. When we have our soldiers bill of rights for housing i think those provisions will be struck. Struck. To me. A these are families that have faced multiple, multiple deployments in iraq and afghanistan, around the world. It is extremely important to me that they not have stressed their family members have not home because of housing issues. If a military tenant has a complaint or concern, how can they add and so closely addressed this in an adequate manner and most recently snow removal has come up in the north country. Fme of you dont face that but its a significant concern that came up at a town hall just recently. Thank you for the question. We operate with very clear protocols responding to inquiries and giving multiple Access Points for any concerns they can come straight to the project director Customer Service, we monitor the request digitally so it isnt a manual process and we can track anything n that isnt monitored. We have a management regime looking at the things that are not addressed in a proper manner. In addition, the board we have actually put in place that we will be rolling out very soon as the other which residents can get places and access because we will have those Community Representatives on small areas and making sure there are several opportunities for them to be heard and have an opportunity to voice their concerns. I will yield back. Thank you chair man and gentlemen for joining. Im a thirdgeneration military. My mom was a resident of military housing as were her six brothers and sisters. I was a resident as was my brother and i have full active duty members that are cousins sand we represent the army, nav, air force. I also was an educator and a community that wass underserved and the population lived in Housing Conditions that look a lot like this and as an educator and a a person that lived in housing like this i can say im worried for the children that are exposed to lead and mold and what im hearing is people are not using the word mold because it would create problems. Your organizations are creating kind of the opportunity. Would you be able to submit your policies on the remediation of amelioration so we understand what they are and what you do in terms of y the timeline and what you do to make sure people, you talked a lot about displacement. What happens when they are displaced and also for the record again with compensation to families have when their goods are destroyed having had that experience as a child i understand that. I would like to have that for the record. The other thing i would like to understand maybe individually in the case where there is a child has been affected by this will permanently be disabled by this much responsibility do you have and do you plan for with your forprofit businesses to make sure those children and families are being taken care of or do you expect the government will do that for you . We work directly with the medical community on the installation with the garrison commander, and we try to divine where the problem really is. We have had instances where although we believe that was the home causing it, it turned out that it was led in the planned at the soldier was actually working in. Lets assume it is something identified that happened in the past. If we find out that its determined that home is in fact the cause of the illness, then we will support the child or its medical cost. We are supportive of the process of determination and dispute resolution and so forth. If there is fault is determined we will certainly work with whatever the determination is. A bad. Provide you with we have a 24 hour respons 2424 e time just to let you know if anything happens within the 24 hours if the residents feel uncomfortable we will relocate them so there is a whole regime that we deal with that i would be happy to share with you. Since if we are the cause of any condition we absolutely want to financialllook tofinancially coy structure that is appropriate. I would agree with the other gentlemen if we are found to be involved or complicit. And you are planning for that because youve been at this for a couple of decades and there are those that have now presumably grown that we have these problems that can be attributed. Congresswoman, we will also provide you the protocols and whatnot. To answer the question about medical, again, if we are proven to be at fault then we work with families to figure out the best resolution to solve that issue. With the last 45 seconds of my time i would like to know ive heard a lot of down the line yes, yes, no, no. I havent been a farmer entrepreneur person myself, but best practices are something you talk about individually but do you have a group that you share with you across your organization so that each one of your standards is similarly the same or use if you have a roundtable. Do you have a best practice round table . We actually formed the military Housing Association specifically to do that as an outcome of challenges weve had, we realize we sharweve realizee individual best practices but we started to do that on a grand scale and its t providing somef the benefits that you will be seeing more have been seeing so far. I want to give everybody else their time so i would like to share if you could get back to us. K i will yield back. Thank you mr. Wilson. Thank you mr. Chairman and each of you for being here today. Mr. Taylor, im grateful that for the leadership at fort jackson and the Commander Brigadier general has conducted a town hall to address the issues of housing. Complaints were raised about the broken sidewalks along the lines for the completion of the work orders and no shows by the maintenance staff. What have you done to correct these deficiencies and is there a residency Advisory Board established and is there a project manager that you can report to on a 24 hour basis . Thank you, congressman. Universally across the portfolio, we are Getting Better at forming resident groups that we can meet with an you and we o that in concert with our military partners in the frequency that we would participate again along with our military partners those are goop ways to get the information to understand the concerns the residentof theresidents are fac. In terms of the processes and the changes that were undertaking that i indicated in my opening remarks to address a more broader problem. A lot of that is true process procedure making sure we have appropriate. Is there a hotline where a resident code report an issue. We have an 800 line anybody can call to let us know at the corporate level with your deal with the military i understand that there is a 50 year deal. The agreements are no agreements end you consider the partner not a contractor. Can you explain this and how the system works . Not a legal member like the army in the projects, but they have an investment in the of the governmentbacked loans they have the project and recidivism partnership ander of course none of these can succeed without a good functioning partnership and it works very well the air force. I will yield the balance of my time to the congresswoman. To follow up, one of the aspects that we focused on is the importance of a common bill of rights. I wantt to hear from each of you and i will start with you just because of the importance of your answer to my district but writes are you proactively ensuring that are afforded to the military families leasing your properties and how do you measure the success . Thank you for the question. We have been working diligently on the bill of rights so we participated with our suggestions and that is well documented but puttin that putte ability for residents to receive the refund if they are in a situation where they are s in a house that hasnt been maintained properly, theyt can get plain english contracts to terminate if theres something wrong withhi the house and givig more flexibility back to the residence. I know youve communicated back to the services. What about the families. Have you solicited back for suggestions for the bill of rights . We have been holding town halls, all of the bases getting that feedback and asking what they would like to see s some it has been a collaborative approach. I wouli would take the answer the record because my time has expired. Thank you, chairman. And thank you all for coming. I appreciate you being here and taking the time to be with us today. My district is in new mexicos First Congress shall distract. We have 365 days of sun per year and the climate is dry yet we still have reports of mold for whatever reason. It sounds kind of strange, but nonetheless, that is one of the reasons my constituents have reported to me. I am the daughter of a 30 year career marine so i grew up along housing on the Southern California and virginia both. Luckily i have nothing but good memories of those times including many of the families that do not share the same memory is that i do. I do hear some good things for my district. I hear the information about the technicians coming into the home and that qualit the quality of s improved. Im glad to hear they are taking these steps. Substantial challenges remain. Families continue to receive inconsistent treatment and information from the staff. Can you please share what steps your company has taken to improve and standardize customerservice . The lack of consistency is something we are focused on all across the portfolio and one of the reasons they are focused on promoting standardization across not just our portfolio in the industry. Things like variances and completion standards. Weve already done it in our own portfolio for the consistency in terms of our Environmental Concerns they are on the rise in the last couple of years we have seen the conditions that have historically been seen but i dont think that is going to change in the future so we are beefing up our environmental expertise at the corporate level and the training for the bemaintenance tech and we made a great deal of progress in filling those positionsng and tn of course increased training among all of our people. I would like to turn to the issue of mold and thank you for raising that your self. It continues to be a major challenge and weve heard that from my colleagues many families wants to have license testing in their homes. Some have been told other Housing Companies wont accept these result results with thirdy experts wouldnt be permitted to enter the home. What is this by the experts. They find it to be inconclusive from elsewhere in the portfolio. On the other hand we have been in houses where theres obvious mold and it comes back there is no mold inth the house. Would you allow families to seek a Second Opinion by licensed thirdparty experts . We support anything the residents choose to pursue. Again, we found that the testing is unreliable because it can goi either way. It can be a false positive for a false negative. One of the aspects as prevention and mitigation. We have a population of young soldiers and this is the first and they are responsible for the home they are living. How are you investing in providing materials to know to contact you before something gets to the crisis level that we have seen in these photos . Many times. 18 or 19yearold people that 1t just moved out of home and think about issues. Anytime someone moves into a residence at the personal handover we explained that maintenance obligations and 330 and 90 day check in to make sure what are we doing it if they want help looking after their home and also a inspection so to help give them visibility of what they can do better there is a little but of education we can do more of it. Thank you. I will yield back. I think the committee and subcommittee for allowing me to participate in todays hearing let me start by saying i support the military housing ayprivatization initiative and things like enhanced use the same publicprivate partnershi partnerships. Weve done a lot of good things from the port of baltimore to thert purple line to the travel plazas on the road but only when we can ensure we deliver quality safety reliable value products and services. We cherish our military families and here we fell short. I get that circumstances may have changed over the decade or so and i hear about the drawdown and reductions in health up pressure on the ability to deliver quality but what concerns me is if the courage of the military spouses to comef to congress. The pentagon didnt come to congress and say we have a problem. You didnt come to congress and say we have a problem. The framework, the model, the formulas that we base these agreements on. Instead, military families got squeezed into this military spouses who stepped up and it is a shame on you and the pentagon and weve got to fix it. In february of 2019 you stated we hire worldrenowned specialists at no cost and so we arsevereliving up to the gold sd at. Earlier enjoyed in the partnerships. This is a question why have you not been able to return to the Gold Standard you promised the congress and servicemembers and why is your position chain just ask our position hasnt changed we endeavor to return to the Gold Standard. It will be when a deployed soldier is able to callback which is one of the tenants we found our business on. We talked to his or her family about whats happening in their lives and not deal with home owners issues. We are getting closer and closer back to that standard. You mentioned town halls and greater communication and servicemembers is a big part of it in their families. Its my understanding a at least one Service Member has been denied access. Arenare you familiar with that . I would ask you please to familiarize yourself so that when we say they are in both formal and informal communications. I would ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a letter ive sent asking the commander to step upco its oversight becae i believe that you were not even making progress. Without objection, can we enter this into the record . Without objection. Several of the servicemembers have conveyed that they have experienced retaliation from your company in response to the attempts and these include obscene gestures, denying access to the Response Group and refusal to address maintenance issues until they receive a pcs. Are you aware and do you condone this behavior and what actions will you take to ensure the harassment ceases . We take any form of retaliation or tradition or harassment seriously and do not condone that behavior. Im not aware of any specific cases that is taking place. I will look into it immediately and report back when we have our findings. These are serious allegations. When military families are stepping up and protecting their own rights, they certainly do not want the retaliatory measures and wit in place that mr. Chairman and i will t yield back. Im very grateful for this hearing thank you to the panelists i appreciate your presence here and i want to recognize and thank the military families that have expressed so much courage in the face of potential retaliation and after liyears of frustration and incredible difficulty thank you for being here. Im grateful for your strength and courage. Ive had these conversations with most of you. Those conversations at the roundtable were shocking, heartbreaking, difficult to hear and to be honest infuriating. Im grateful theres been a spotlight placed on all of this and theres been a demonstrated desire to preserve the partnership to sustain it and make sure we continue it. We had a c conversation about al of this but as i mentioned in my office what was troubling on top of the issues families brought forth, issues that meant peoples lives were upended in at risk through mold and Everything Else but what was particularly troubling for me is the fraud allegations and we talked about everything youre doing not just to remedy but investigate. Im going to ask you the same clthing i asked you in my office and this is about accountability because too often it is swept under the rug but the high paid highlevel folks that should have known and should have created a culture of accountability remain untouched so i am going to ask you here what i asked you privately i would like to know the number of dismissals that have occurred and any other disciplinary actions that have been taken and how will the leadership, how far up the chain will that accountability go and how will the leadership be held accountable and if you could answer all those questions for me imns not asking for names of folks were for you to disclose anything in the personnel files, this is important to understand in terms of accountability, the general information, please. I do recall the conversation and it gave me an opportunity to go back and interrogate our information so that i would be prepared to respond. I will repeat a comment earlier we are all accountable to provide the service we are interested to provide it doesnt matter where we sit in the organization. I went back and asked how many folks on the staff were let go because they didnt comply with our policy procedures or code of conduct because that is the heart of our organization if we do not have Staff Members that are willing to follow those policies and procedures it is an obvious weakness in any organization. We found 17 instances where we let people go because they were not complying with the standards that we set for our employees. That we set for our employees. Thank you i am just about out of time but for all of you it is important the improvements that you have made you report back to us. We need to know the number of calls and people using the apps o et cetera we need to see within a time certain complete transparency its the only way we can hold you accountable as well as ourselves. I yelled a back. Votes have been called so i willte wrap it up with a couple of comments i notice the quality of questions from both sidessk asked everything i would have asked first of all this hearing is one of a series. We will not let this issue go im sure the members of this committee and stay on this and the committee during my chairmanship should that lapse they will have that carry on for those who are not here they also will be held accountable along the questions asked by the committee. Several things need to be noted first of all we knew at the outset part of the problem the base commanders did not take responsibility that is cchanging. That needs to be addressed the pentagon is well aware from the previous secretary all the way down the line and we will see that accountabilityee remains with the base commanders secondly there will be a bill of rights it is in a near final form we havent had a chance to review it and the pentagon is awaiting the passage of the final version that may have some impact on the bill of rights itself but it will be forthcoming b and in many ways deal with the issues of today. The lease contracts themselves we will push that all leases across the military reach the highest standard of any state of homeowners which im told might be massachusetts but i claim california we will see we think that tenant rights are better than North Carolina bring it forward we will see but either way we will try to achieve consistente with the multiplicity of contracts that exist between the military and private Housing Providers to make sure the lease contracts protect the tenants so they will be in the first order we have many questions about metrics across a range of issues those are under review i would ask any member who has ideas about what should be in those metrics to bring it to us. Finally with regard to the role of the tenants and communities themselves there are efforts underway that within the rental Community Programs that they can participate. Pta was mentioned but that speaks to the involvement of families working to gather to assure the issues are fully dealt with at the base level. I think that covers many of the issues. We are adjourned and first we are a coming back we will do these hearings every four months we will be back in early spring for a review of where we are and we will also ask the owners of the Privatized Housing. We are adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] seeming thank you very much i just returned from london with tremendous success from nato the relationship we have with other countries is very very good. Nato was suffering very badly from completion of funds like a roller coaster goes down and over the last couple of