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Fighting for our troops on the home front: disabled tenants in military housing sometimes face discrimination. Litigation can enforce their rights against the private companies that manage base housing.

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Much of the housing on military bases is in poor shape. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has made improving it a top priority, recognizing that quality military housing is crucial for troop morale, readiness to fight, recruitment, and retention. (1) In one of the largest privatization projects ever launched by a federal agency, DOD is giving private developers and management companies a chance to own, operate, maintain, and improve thousands of housing units on military bases across the country. (2)

At the same time that privatized military housing is becoming increasingly common, the population of disabled people living on military bases is likely to be growing. More than 17,000 U.S. soldiers have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at least 450 have lost limbs, hands, or feet. (3) The military has announced that it will try to keep seriously wounded and disabled soldiers on active duty if they're still willing to serve. (4)

Although people living in privatized military housing are protected by the same civil rights, housing, and consumer protection laws that protect all citizens, (5) disabled tenants' legal rights may be neglected as the government hands over housing responsibility to private, for-profit firms. But these tenants' rights can be enforced through civil litigation, particularly since the legal immunity that the military enjoys under some circumstances does not protect the private firms that are taking over what once was a military function.

For example, in Parents Against Disability Discrimination v. Equity Residential several military families living on the Fort Lewis Army base in Washington state brought a lawsuit to stop disability discrimination by the private firm that began managing on-base housing in 2002. (6) The plaintiffs claimed that they could not get structural modifications needed to make their housing accessible and safe (such as the addition of grab bars in bathrooms or the remediation of mold infestation, which causes and exacerbates respiratory disabilities), that they could not get reasonable accommodations to housing policies, and that they experienced retaliation after requesting reasonable accommodations. (7)

The lawsuit resulted in a landmark settlement that, among other things, required the private firm to make 10 percent of the base's housing units accessible to people with disabilities. It also prompted creation of a fair, streamlined process for disabled residents to request structural modifications to housing and other reasonable accommodations. (8)

The growing privatization of military housing has been made possible by the Military Housing Privatization Initiative, (9) enacted by Congress in 1996 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. The initiative gives DOD the authority to enter into long-term partnerships and contracts with private firms that agree to take over responsibility for on-base housing in exchange for a guaranteed stream of rent payments from the military. (10) The department, in turn, has delegated its authority under the initiative to each of the military services. (11)

Through privatization, the military hopes to remedy both the substandard condition of DOD-owned housing units--the average unit is 33 years old--and a shortage of affordable private housing for its servicemembers, especially for its junior enlisted personnel who have trouble affording quality housing within a reasonable commuting distance of...

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