United States Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) met with military families who live on Fort Gordon Friday to talk about living conditions and the failure of the company Balfour Beatty Communities, which makes millions managing military housing, to fix the problems.
Ossoff has led an eight-month U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation into Balfour Beatty’s practices at Fort Gordon and Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. Balfour Beatty manages 43,000 homes on 55 military bases and is supposed to serve about 150,000 residents.
On Friday, Ossoff sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asking that all military branches investigate Balfour Beatty. In 2019. the company was found guilty of criminal fraud in connection with how it failed to fix unsafe housing and a judge ordered the company to pay fines and restitution totaling $65.4 million. Ossoff said the Senate investigation found continuing abuses and he also asked Austin what lawmakers can do to change laws to help fix the problem.
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Chrissy Dykes, who lives on Fort Gordon with her husband and three children, said she is hopeful because of Ossoff’s efforts, even though she believes her husband will retire before the problems are addressed.
“You’re always going to have issues with government homes,” said Dykes. “But when it comes to things like breathing and mold and things that can affect your health, to me that’s a different level.”
Because of one child’s medical condition, she needed a home with no carpeting and certainly no mold. When she moved in, there was mold on the bathtub, which she cleaned. Then she found bleach spots on the floor in her bathroom and a moldy odor, so she fought for months to get Balfour Beatty to replace the floor.
Other families who lived on Fort Gordon had similar complaints.
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Jana Wanner, whose husband is an instructor on Fort Gordon, testified in Washington, D.C., before Ossoff’s subcommittee. On Friday she backed up Ossoff and spoke to members of the media about conditions in on-post housing. Wanner’s husband declined to comment.
“We had an A/C that didn’t work,” Wanner said. “It would get up to over 90 in our house. It was miserably hot, and they would say they came out and fixed it. But we could never get it below 88 or 89.”
Wanner also found mold, and the first night in their home the refrigerator leaked and flooded the kitchen, she said. They moved off post, but because of medical needs of her teenage daughter they need a home that is built for people with disabilities, so they are selling their home and moving back on post, Wanner said.
Wanner said the first solution is to “cut Balfour Beatty out completely. They don’t deserve the contract. They don’t deserve to take care of military families.”
Dyke’s bathroom floor of a house managed by the
Balfour Beatty company. Photo by Chrissy Dykes.
Richard C. Taylor, a Balfour Beatty executive, presented written testimony to Ossoff’s committee and defended the company’s record.
“In 2019, I made a commitment in congressional testimony to improve BBC’s ability to monitor repairs and respond to problems, to prioritize the health and safety of residents, and to prepare homes for residents before they move into one of our homes. I’m proud to say that we have made enormous strides since I made that commitment,” Taylor wrote.
Not true, Dykes said. And she has the photos to prove it of the moldy bathroom that was unclean in 2020 when she and her family moved in.
Ossoff said one major issue is the lack of choice for military families. They can only call Balfour Beatty to make repairs because Fort Gordon, like other military bases, does not contract with small companies to make repairs for on-post housing.
Joshua B. Good is a staff reporter covering Columbia County and military/veterans’ issues for The Augusta Press. Reach him at joshua@theaugustapress.com
