Detrick allowing others to rent houses on-base - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Detrick allowing others to rent houses on-base

FREDERICK, Md. — Fort Detrick enjoys having the vast majority of its employees live out in the Greater Frederick community, so much so that garrison commander Col. Judith Robinson’s famous line to neighborhoods beyond the gate has become “We are you and you are us.”

But its housing occupancy rates have dropped too low recently, prompting Fort Detrick to open up on-post housing to nonmilitary families for the first time.

Military families can choose from 354 homes in seven separate neighborhoods at Fort Detrick. Dwellings range from rows of older brick townhouses to four-bedroom single-family houses only five years old.

But what they all had in common was that they were all filled by military families, be it the families of soldiers that work at Fort Detrick or of active-duty Marines assigned to the local reserve unit’s training staff. Single soldiers had separate barracks on-post they could live in, and nonmilitary employees were not permitted to live on-post.

Although housing management company Balfour Beatty Communities would not release specific numbers, spokeswoman Kathy Grim said occupancy rates fell below 90 percent, leading the company and the Army to agree they needed to reach out to a wider pool of potential renters. Without full occupancy, the management company doesn’t have the funds it needs to properly maintain the houses, Grim said.

So, Balfour Beatty and Fort Detrick announced that interns, civilian employees and contractors, and others affiliated with Detrick would be eligible to sign a lease.

“That move will be good for our Balfour Beatty partners and therefore good for the installation overall,” Fort Detrick spokesman Chuck Gordon wrote in an e-mail. “With so few military tenants, it would be tough for [Balfour Beatty] to continue the excellent — and award-winning — quality of housing and family programs they currently maintain unless they broadened the scope of their rentals. In that light, the change will allow them to continue caring for the military families living there at the same high standard that they are known for.”

Although this is a first for Fort Detrick, other military installations around the country are doing the same thing to help keep housing rates up, Grim said.

Grim said that once demand is met for military families who need accommodation, it may be offered to other categories of residents, including retired military members, current and retired federal service employees, Defense Department contractors, single soldiers, and members of the National Guard and Reserve.

“These people are part of our military family,” she said. “We work with many of them every day, we know them and they know us.”

Grim added that anyone who applies for military housing at Fort Detrick will go through a thorough a vetting process and background check before being allowed to move on-post.

She stressed that military families will still have first dibs at available housing units. Special incentives are being offered to military families newly stationed at Fort Detrick, and if there’s any increase in demand from those military families then leasing to nonmilitary families would be halted.

“Our first priority is always to our active-duty military families,” Grim said.