Driver said her twins had been complaining of having horrible headaches and being dizzy.

“I was terrified that they had a brain tumor,” she said. “I mean, I couldn’t imagine what was wrong with them.”

Driver’s husband followed the maintenance worker to look into the maintenance closet and overheard the worker “freaking out” on the phone with the housing office, saying that the closets should have been redone months ago.

When her husband attempted to look into the closet, the worker reportedly told him, “Oh, I can’t let you come in here. You’re not allowed to see in this room.” But Driver said her husband pushed through and saw that the maintenance closet was covered, floor to ceiling, in black mold.

“You could see where they had been spraying it with bleach and scrubbing it,” Driver said. “And they admitted that they’d been doing that for six months.”

Driver said their family moved out immediately and sought a doctor that treats mold toxicity in Oklahoma.

Lack Of Help From Federal Entities

The Military Matters Foundation founders were frustrated that their efforts to draw attention to the conditions of military homes have been met with little attention by those in government positions.

“We still have seen no major improvements, no thorough assessments of the homes and the [Public Private Venture] PPV landlords are, for the most part, still not being held accountable for negligent building maintenance resulting in debilitating symptoms,” Mantz said. A private partner who manages the day-to-day owns PPV housing under an agreement with the Department of Defense, which has limited rights and responsibilities.

Both Driver and Mantz said that whistleblowers are coming forward with evidence showing that families will file complaints with the Office of the Inspector General (IG) for an investigation.

“We have people that work at the IG offices at local bases that have said the Pentagon sent them directives saying close out all of these investigations ASAP,” Mantz said.

The MMF founders attended a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on privatized housing Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where Republican Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe called the conditions of military base homes a “national crisis.”

“We’ve come to learn that it is a problem nationwide,” he said and promised to take action against such conditions. “It’s a national crisis of proportions we have not seen since the scandal at Walter Reed a decade ago.”

MMF’s intake survey also showed that 35.4% of respondents listed Balfour Beatty as their housing company and 32% listed Lincoln was their housing company. Other housing companies that respondents listed included Corvias, Hunt, Lend Lease and Rising View.

Corvias, Hunt and Rising View did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

“These companies are so fraudulent and so out of control,” Mantz said. “There’s no accountability. And we’ve seen a lot of what the DOD is doing is absolutely protecting them. Really.”

“It’s just such an embarrassment how no one is coming forward to really be a hero and help these families, for military families,” she added.

Lend Lease told the DCNF that it responds to resident concerns over the “healthiness of their homes immediately” and that it is implementing a range of “preventative solutions” that include “the application of new mold-inhibiting paint and primer during the change of occupancy period, installing enhanced [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] HVAC filters, and replacing ventilation systems as needed.”

“Over the past year, we have made substantial investments in staffing and technology improvements to implement repairs at an even faster pace,” the company told the DCNF. “We have also created an enhanced customer service training curriculum to deliver the best possible resident experience to families living on-base.”

A spokeswoman for Balfour Beatty told the DCNF in a statement that “the health and safety of residents is always our top priority.”

“We take prompt action to investigate complaints about mold,” the spokeswoman added. “Mold is an issue for many people living in areas that experience high temperatures and humidity or rainfall. It is not unique to military housing. We are, however, working diligently to prevent and detect mold. We have added regional environmental specialists, retained licensed environmental consultants, enhanced environmental training for our employees, improved quality assurance, added quality control specialists, and increased the regular inspection of homes for mold and moisture issues.”

The spokeswoman added that Balfour Beatty follows “all applicable [Environmental Protection Agency] EPA guidelines and regulatory standards in the remediation of mold.”

Balfour Beatty has denied similar allegations in the past. The company told CBS News in a June statement that it “has not and does not condone the falsification of records in any way” after allegations surfaced that service members lived in dangerous, “slum-like” conditions at military bases around the country and that Balfour Beatty allegedly falsifying data in order to get millions in bonuses.

Balfour Beatty also said in June that “one employee was found to have acted improperly” after an Air Force investigation.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the DOD responded to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

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Image: Reuters.