Editorial: As problems with base housing mount, Congress dithers

The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press Editorial Board, The Virginian-Pilot on Aug 25, 2026

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Elected officials rarely miss a chance to pose for photos at military bases or thank military personnel for their service. But when it comes to providing the pay, health care and quality housing that service members and their families deserve, political leaders are often slow to report for duty — or are AWOL entirely.

Such is the case with the bill pending in Congress since January that would better protect military families from ordeals like the one that Chief Damage Controlman Matt Campbell, his wife Laura and their children have endured in military housing in Virginia Beach.

The Campbells, as was recently reported in The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, struggled for more than two years to get their landlord to fix a suspected mold problem in their four-bedroom townhouse at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story.

From the start, Linda Campbell noticed a moldy smell in the military-provided housing — owned and managed by Balfour Beatty, a United Kingdom-based firm — but she had little idea how much it would change her family’s lives.

Since moving in, the Campbells have suffered from a mix of flu-like symptoms, migraines, anxiety, fatigue, heart palpitations, breathing problems, nose bleeds and more. Linda Campbell suffered two miscarriages, despite early indications her pregnancies were proceeding normally.

An independent test confirmed the townhouse has mold problems, but Balfour Beatty resisted conducting its own test, saying that earlier checks found no leaks. Even after a storm brought rain into the home and a maintenance crew conducted roof repairs last fall, the company didn’t test for mold.

Shamefully, stories such as this aren’t rare. That’s what prompted a bipartisan group of lawmakers — as ideologically distant as U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, and Joni Ernst, R-IA — to cooperate on sponsorship of the Military Occupancy Living Defense (MOLD) Act.

“An estimated 700,000 service members and their families are affected by hazardous conditions in military-provided housing, including prolonged mold exposure,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement in January. “These conditions are associated with increased risks of respiratory illness, neurological symptoms, developmental delays in children, and other serious health effects.”

Their estimate aligns with a 2025 survey of 3,400 military families conducted by the Change the Air Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group that provides information and support to affected families. Three quarters of the respondents said they struggle with mold, mildew or microbial growth in military-provided housing.

Balfour Beatty, which leases 43,000 units to military families nationwide and 249 new and renovated homes at Fort Story, is no stranger to this problem either. The company has been repeatedly named in lawsuits over substandard housing, including one involving families at Naval Air Station Key West in Florida.

In 2021, Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to a fraud count tied to falsifying maintenance records to illegally claim millions of dollars in federal incentives. As part of the plea deal, the company paid $65 million in fines and restitution and entered into a compliance monitoring program for three years.

The required monitoring ended in June, but — despite the company’s claims that it’s implemented an improvement program — it’s clear the federal government needs to conduct inspections of Balfour Beatty’s properties at 55 military installations, including Fort Story.

Twenty years ago, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to privatize military housing — an initiative designed to improve living conditions. At the time, DOD faced a backlog of $20 billion in repairs, which would have taken at least 30 years to clear.

But as the Campbells can attest, the privatization effort hasn’t fared well. About 83,000 active-duty members in Hampton Roads live in DOD housing managed by private firms, and complaints arise regularly about mold, water intrusion and other problems.

Today’s hyperpartisan Congress can’t agree on much, but there should be little debate over the need to fast-track passage of the MOLD Act. Military personnel and loved ones deserve far better than what the Campbells and others have been forced to endure.

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