D.C. National Guard members and their families lined up for free Thanksgiving meals at the D.C. Armory last week during an annual event hosted by Operation Homefront, a nonprofit that supports the military community.
As part of their Holiday Meals for Military program, the organization provided families with all the fixings for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner — stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and more. Operation Homefront also distributed Harris Teeter gift cards so families could purchase their protein of choice, whether it’s turkey, ham or chicken. In total, the organization distributed 400 meal kits and grocery gift cards to pre-registered service members and military families.
With grocery prices rising and many service members still feeling the financial strain of the recent shutdown, the organization says demand for assistance has surged — food requests alone are up 57% this year.
“Our case work is up — quadruple — what it was 30 days ago. Undoubtedly, the economic times are difficult for everyone in our country, I think that’s greater with the military,” Vivian Dietrich, Operation Homefront senior director, told Federal News Network.
Operation Homefront, founded in 2002, serves military families nationwide by providing financial, emotional and social support through programs designed to keep households “strong, stable and secure,” Dietrich said. Financial assistance, however, is the backbone of the organization’s work, helping lower-ranking service members cover urgent expenses such as car repairs, rent and utility bills before these short-term problems spiral into long-term financial crises.
Through its Critical Financial Assistance program, Operation Homefront offers grants — not loans — and pays vendors on behalf of families. Caseworkers also review a family’s full financial situation to ensure they address the root of the problem.
“When we do our case work, often it’s somebody calling at the nth hour because the military is very proud. And generally, when they call, you’re at the point that you’re desperate, you need support, and our case workers are highly trained social workers. They spend time studying their finances. We work with them on how to manage their money and help them move forward,” Dietrich said.
But food remains the organization’s top request for assistance, Dietrich said.
Surveys conducted by organizations like Blue Star Families consistently find that food insecurity among active-duty families remains higher than the national average.
A number of factors contribute to military families’ financial vulnerability. Service members move dozens of times throughout their career, making it difficult for their spouses to find and maintain employment. Despite years of advocacy and policy efforts, the unemployment rate for active-duty military spouses has held stubbornly at around 22% for quite some time.
Service members also face significant upfront costs when moving to a new base — military families spend an average of about $8,000 out of pocket during each move, which causes them to dip into their savings or accrue credit card debt.
During the recent government shutdown, military families were turning up at food banks in greater numbers — the Armed Services YMCA, for example, reported a 30% to 75% spike in demand at its food pantries near military installations.
“Number one request for us is food — that has quadrupled right out of the top. But generally, it’s food, rent, maybe car payments, utilities — the day-to-day expenses that we all have. But it isn’t uncommon that there was some type of crisis that occurred that caused them to fall behind. A car would break down, or someone is sick and they had to miss work and they didn’t have pay. Or in the military, you can be deployed. You can be out on a training mission. And then if you have children, where’s the childcare?” Dietrich said.
“In general, it’s the basic expenses that we all live with, and if you don’t catch it at the very beginning, it really does become a crisis, and a crisis that can last for years. And our goal is to stay focused, get them strong, secure and stable,” she added.
Operation Homefront provides holiday meals for military families throughout the year, not just at Thanksgiving.
Nearly every service member living in privatized military housing has experienced at least one serious issue in their home — and an overwhelming number say their family’s health has been negatively impacted by their housing conditions. Nearly half said a medical provider had confirmed the connection, a new survey found.
The Change the Air Foundation recently conducted the Safe Military Housing Survey — one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to collect data the Defense Department has never been able to track accurately. The survey was designed to answer questions previous studies had overlooked and to provide Congress and the Pentagon with better data on what families across all branches and ranks are actually experiencing in military housing.
“We were hearing a lot of how many indoor air quality hazards and just housing hazards that these families were experiencing. But nobody was really ever asking, how is this affecting your physical health? How is this affecting your cognitive abilities? How is this affecting your mental and emotional health, and your and your personal finances? That’s a huge component of this survey,” Brandon Chappo, co-founder and director of public policy at the Change the Air Foundation, told Federal News Network.
Erica Thompson, a military spouse and the military families’ liaison for the Change the Air Foundation, lived in military housing for 10 months at Maxwell Air Force Base located in Montgomery, Alabama. Thompson said her family immediately noticed serious issues with the house, including a failing AC system they were told couldn’t be replaced. Once contractors opened the walls without any containment, the entire family — including their dog — began experiencing a cascade of medical issues. Her son started passing out in the house and the dog started having seizures; three of their children were later diagnosed with asthma and one was diagnosed with bilateral pediatric cataracts in both eyes.
“We saw a huge range of health implications across the board, throughout our whole family. And so I think using part of that, it was able to guide us through this questionnaire, some of those things that I wish offices knew. It was able to really give me insight into making some of these questions, because we would share our story with congressional offices, they would say, ‘How many more kids are there like yours?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. There’s no data around that right now,’” Thompson told Federal News Network.
For decades, service members and their families living in privatized military housing have been exposed to hazardous conditions, including black mold, contaminated water, asbestos in ceilings and lead in walls. The survey found that mold, mildew or microbial growth were the most common issues, reported by 74% of respondents. More than half of respondents cited significant problems with temperature and humidity, pest infestations, water damage and HVAC failures.
“Mold and water damage can be extraordinarily hazardous to somebody’s health. That’s extremely dismaying,” Chappo said.
Overall, 76% of service members said their health has been negatively affected by housing conditions, and nearly half said a physician had confirmed their homes were making them sick.
The survey also revealed an alarming statistic — 47% of service members said their housing issues impacted their ability to perform their duties or maintain mission readiness. The problem was particularly prevalent among those stationed in Florida.
Three in five service members reported experiencing mental health challenges such as anxiety or depression, and roughly two in five service members said those issues affected their ability to attend work or training. One in six service members had to relocate — sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently — often leaving behind personal items that had been damaged.
“That is absolutely stunning. And so, if anything, it underscores the importance of trying to get these issues dealt with. It’s the fact that not only are our service members’ health and wellness being affected, it’s mission readiness. This is a national security issue, and we need to start talking about it in that light, and start really framing it in that way,” Chappo said.
While anxiety, depression, mood changes, cognitive issues, insomnia, headaches, migraines, brain fog and skin, eye and respiratory irritation top the list of reported health problems, the survey found the health impacts to be far more extensive than that.
“This is extraordinary. These [medical conditions] weren’t just in the low percentages. We’re talking in the 20, 30, 40 percentages for some of these. Even those alone, being as high as they are, really should catch the attention of, hopefully, the country, and of course, those in Congress,” Chappo said.
The survey found that Florida, Hawaii and Texas experienced housing-related issues at far greater rates and saw significantly higher rates of both health impacts and readiness concerns. Nearly 60% of service members stationed in Florida said housing issues impacted their ability to perform their duties. Health impacts were also higher than average — 84% of Florida service members said their families’ health had been impacted by house-related issues, compared with 83% in Hawaii and North Carolina.
“I think it’s got to do with lots of these states are on federal land, and they don’t have to follow the state regulations for building and code, and so that’s something that needs to be looked at. But Florida, Hawaii and Texas were exponentially higher on those stats for both readiness and really across the board. And those have some really big commands in those states as well that need to have some attention drawn to it,” Thompson said.
Marines reported the highest rates across all branches, with 85% saying their families were affected.
“We were displaced multiple times, with one displacement over 30 days. Relocation to a new home was requested, but we were denied a new home. We ultimately moved into a hotel on our dime after getting rid of everything we owned,” an active Marine service member in North Carolina told the Change the Air Foundation.
Gaps in current dispute resolution process
Whenever a housing-related issue arises, service members are supposed to follow a three-step tenant resolution process that includes built-in escalation steps.
The first step is to file a service call. If the issue isn’t resolved to the service member’s satisfaction, it can be escalated to the Military Housing Office or the government housing office on base, along with the service member’s chain of command to help elevate the issues. Thompson said that’s where most families drop out of the process.
The survey found that nine in ten service members always reported the issues they were experiencing, but only 7% made it all the way through the tenant resolution process — and of those, 72% said it still did not resolve their problem.
One in 14 service members were denied the tenant resolution process altogether.
“I want people to try to understand this, nine of 10 service members reported issues as they should to the proper authorities. Nine of 10 had to report the same issue multiple times. 66% of those had their issues marked resolved without a satisfactory result and over 50% of those went unresolved entirely. We have a situation here where the families are asking, calling, screaming for help. They’re upholding their end of the bargain, and the other side isn’t, and it’s failing,” Chappo said.
“Only 7% of service members actually made it through the entire dispute resolution process. That shows us that it’s broken. It’s failing. It’s not working,” he added.
In addition, the survey highlights major gaps in seven-year housing histories, with only 43% of service members receiving one — and most of those were incomplete.
“You’re able to turn down a house if you recognize or see something you’re not comfortable with. But if their service calls aren’t accurate, or it’s not reporting accurately, I think that screams to a bigger issue of what is going on? What’s the further issue? It’s not only for the service members, but it’s for DoD accountability,” Thompson said.
Out-of-pocket cost of privatized housing
Roughly half of service members reported paying an average of $1,680 out of pocket for costs such as pest control, mold inspections, hotel stays and medical bills .
“If they’re paying for pest control out of pocket, that’s not something that’s reimbursable. Our dehumidifiers and air purifiers are not reimbursable. You just end up paying out of pocket to do what you can, to try and make what you have work. And then same with medical bills, if you’re seeking extra time or care outside of the military, that’s out of pocket as well,” Thompson said.
Nearly all military family housing in the United States — about 99% — is owned and managed by private companies. These projects are built around 50-year ground leases and legal agreements that private partners use to secure financing and guarantee predictable revenue over decades, which limited the Defense Department’s ability to cancel or renegotiate agreements when housing conditions declined, creating oversight challenges that have persisted for decades.
Thompson, along with other advocates, have been advocating for several amendments to be included in the 2026 defense policy bill, including the proposed Healthy at Home on Base Act, which would require the Defense Department to study mold and its health effects in both military housing and barracks. Another amendment would direct the department to adopt uniform mold remediation standards across all barracks and family housing.
“We’re hearing a lot of congressional offices are starting to read the report, and they’re already asking for meetings to discuss these a little more closely, and then, of course, talk about some of the fixes and solutions. We’re having some feedback and some conversations with folks at the Pentagon who are kind of taking a closer look at this as well, and trying to come up with long term fixes, as opposed to band aid fixes,” Chappo said.
A sheet containing resources for U.S. military families affected by on-base housing water contamination from a jet fuel leak in 2021 is seen at the Dietz family's home on Monday, April 22, 2024, in Honolulu, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin)
A new survey found that nearly every service member living in privatized military housing has experienced serious problems in their home. Many of those issues go unresolved. The Change the Air Foundation recently found 97% of service members reported at least one significant problem in their military-provided home, with mold, mildew and water damage cited most frequently. Out of 3,401 respondents, three-quarters said their family’s health had been negatively impacted by their housing conditions, and nearly half said a medical provider had confirmed the connection.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is too often missing out on its final chance to identify improper payments through contracting. A new report from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found CMS routinely fell short in properly closing out contracts. Auditors say this puts billions of dollars at risk of waste, fraud and abuse. While CMS concurred with the IG's recommendations, officials say the report overstated the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse during the audit's five-year review period. The IG said contract closeout has long been a challenge for CMS, dating back to reports from 2007.
A transgender employee with the National Guard is suing the Trump administration over its bathroom policies in federal buildings. The administration earlier this year banned transgender and intersex federal employees from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. Following the ban, the employee’s supervisors told her she could no longer use the women’s restroom. The employee, who is represented by attorneys with Democracy Forward, alleged that the administration’s policy is employee discrimination in violation of Title VII.
More federal employees who received layoff notices are looking to get their jobs back. Recently laid-off employees at the General Services Administration are calling on the agency to rescind their reduction-in-force notices, citing language in the recently passed continuing resolution that directed agencies to rescind the RIFs. Attorneys representing them say their clients received RIF notices before the government shutdown and were officially separated from the agency during the shutdown. Attorneys say lawmakers intended to reverse all RIF actions, not just RIF notices.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is pulling the plug on plans to install electric vehicle chargers at its facilities. The Biden administration directed the VA to divert $77 million dollars from its construction and technology budget to build solar-powered EV charging stations. But the department said it will now put those funds toward health care construction projects.
Senior Executive Service members have some new training opportunities. The Office of Personnel Management has launched two new training series centered on executive development. The trainings, available governmentwide, focus on topics like constitutional governance, budget, policy and human capital management. Executives who are interested in taking the classes can register on OPM’s website. The costs for the courses range from $1,500 to $8,500. OPM is also asking agencies to announce the availability of the trainings to their employees by Dec. 19.
The Defense Information Systems Agency said it needs to extend a legacy contract for software asset management, largely because of staffing issues. The agency is extending the multi-million dollar contract without competition, saying the program office that was supposed to be managing a new award has been hit hard by staff cuts, deferred resignations and hiring challenges. DISA’s justification and approval document adds another year to the contract, extending it for the second time this year. The underlying award has been in place since 2019.
The cloud security program known as FedRAMP is getting back on track after the shutdown. FedRAMP has finalized its requirements for cloud service companies wanting to participate in the phase 20x pilot. The program management office detailed seven key changes in a new blog post. These include limiting the number of pilot participants to 10 cloud servicer providers who want to achieve a moderate authorization in an expedited way. The PMO expects to name the 10 pilot companies by Jan. 9 and have them through the new process by March 31. Additionally, FedRAMP issued a new continuous monitoring playbook, consolidating nine standalone documents and eliminating about 100 pages of redundant or outdated content.
The Space Force is finalizing its first “objective force” blueprint, a 15-year plan that will lay out what space systems, infrastructure and manpower the service will need to counter future threats in space. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said “the bulk of the work is almost complete,” though stakeholders likely won’t see the final product until 2026. The goal for the document is to clearly and formally communicate the Space Force’s long-term needs to its stakeholders, including Congress, defense contractors, allies and partners.
Terry Gerton Welcome back to this special Veterans Day edition: The best of the Federal Drive with Terry Gerton on Federal News Network. The White House is working to lower the cost of IVF, putting fertility care in the spotlight. But military families often face extra hurdles when trying to start a family, whether it’s deployments, relocations, or the demands of service. New legislation aims to close that gap. To help us understand the medical side of this issue, Federal News Network’s Eric White spoke with Dr. Michael Wittenberger, a reproductive endocrinologist and Navy veteran who spent years treating veterans and their families.
Eric White So obviously, they’re not the only ones that can struggle with infertility, but what is it in particular about military families, where they have even more of an issue getting treatment for it? What are some of the roadblocks of the jobs that they entail that kind of getting in the way? What is what is that you have seen?
Michael Wittenberger The military by its nature is just a different organization completely than what most people are. The military mission takes precedence, and so the military mission often will require that service members are separated from their families. That can be while they are watch-standing, it can be on workups, it can be on deployment. So there’s frequent separations between the partners that are trying to get pregnant. And so using different surveys, there seems to be an increase in the difficulty for military family members in planning and executing a family. And when you look at the prevalence of infertility in the military, it seems like it’s higher than the civilian population. So in addition to these frequent interruptions and the continuity between partners, there’s a number of other things that are inherent to just the military. There’s different jobs that you have, and there’s different expectations for different duty assignment. It’s expected while you’re on sea duty that you don’t try to get pregnant because you’re expected to deploy even though you may be in port and you may not be deployable at that moment. At the time that you’re there, you’re expected not to get pregnant. The other half is okay to get pregnant, but again, there’s other things like access to care. When I retired in 2022, I was one of three active-duty reproductive endocrinologists and infertility specialists in the entire Navy. That’s serving, you know, the approximately 500,000 active-duty Navy and Marines on both coasts and around the world. So you can imagine when there’s just a couple or three specialists that there’s going to be bottlenecks in care. And a lot of times the sailors, the marines, the service members are going to located remotely so there’s not going to a local catchment where they can be seen and taken care of. So another barrier to care is really just a delay in diagnosis for many of them for getting the care, they’ll be out in an area they can’t access care, so they have to wait to come back to a military training facility that actually has a reproductive endocrinologist to try to get access to care. So, you know, a lot of different barriers potentially to care for the military family.
Eric White I guess we can start with your interaction with these patients. Was that a frustration that you heard a lot in treating service members, you know, “it took me two months to get this appointment”? Did some of them seek help outside of their respective military branch?
Michael Wittenberger I would say that’s always been a concern of people trying to access care, is that the delay to get in and see a specialist is hard or that they need to go out and see fertility specialist in the civilian world. The problem with that is that in both cases, TRICARE, they completely covered the diagnostics of trying to diagnose you with infertility, but the treatment options are very limited with TRICARE for active duty. They consist basically of any treatment option that uses coitus as a form of conception. So that means anything with artificial insemination, IVF, fertility preservation in many cases is not covered by TRICARE. So yes, the military members try to access care on the outside. And they find out that they have to cover the bill, and so that’s a huge financial burden for them. Even within the military, there’s a thought that if they can get care at the military treatment facility with a reproductive endocrinologist as active duty, that it’ll be covered. Well, that’s only partially true. So TRICARE has an exception to the lack of coverage that allows them to, for graduate medical education purposes, provide some additional care, like artificial insemination and the monitoring for IVF, the medications for IVF. So it does slightly reduce the cost of IVF, but since there’s no embryology team in any of the military services, there’s still a lot of expenses that the patient needs to contract with the civilian embryology lab or IVF center to actually cover.
Eric White And so let’s finish up here with some of the solutions that have been proposed and other ones that you think could be implemented. There’s legislation in the House from Rep. Sarah Jacobs that is aiming to increase access for military families to this treatment. What do you know about that? And what else could be done to make this an easier process for those that are looking to serve their country, but also want to fulfill their familial wishes?
Michael Wittenberger Sarah Jacobs is a fellow San Diegan, so it’s good to see that she’s really pressing for this. My understanding of the legislation is that it’s been reintroduced in April of this year. It was previously passed through the House, and I think Tammy Duckworth introduced it into the Senate, and both of those were passed and put into last year’s NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. And then it was scrubbed at the last minute. And so now they’re reintroducing…and my understanding is that this includes basically standard-of-care treatment for active-duty TRICARE recipients and their dependents, which just means that there’s IVF included in this, there’s artificial insemination included in this. And I think it’s three cycles of IVF, unlimited embryo transfers; it doesn’t matter if you’re single or you’re partnered, it’s inclusive there. Now, the great travesty, I think, here is when you look at what’s currently available to our warfighters that are out there sacrificing their lives potentially to build a country for their families, that maybe they end up sacrificing their families. But as soon as they exit…active duty, if they separate, if they retire, now they’re in the VA system and there’s a huge discrepancy at what’s provided by the VA versus what’s providing for active-duty members. So the VA, if you have a fertility-related diagnosis, if you’re currently experiencing infertility in the active-duty forces and you separate and you have fertility-related diagnosis, now you’re eligible for up to six cycles of IVF. Even if you don’t have a fertility-related diagnosis, you’re automatically eligible for artificial insemination. So, you know, the bottom line really is that if you’re active duty and your priority is to start a family and you have a fertility-related diagnosis, it may actually benefit you to leave active duty and go into the VA system to get that care covered without the financial burdens that it causes.
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