A Navy plan to transfer all of the housing for junior sailors in Hampton Roads to a private company still has not been finalized after two years.
The ambitious plan would fold all the roughly 8,000 Navy barracks beds in the region under a private contract. It would be the largest private contract for housing junior sailors in the military, valued at $1.8 billion.
Leslie Gould, then the head of Navy Installations Command, first announced the plan to WHRO in March 2024. Gould left the Navy in January. Hunt Investment Properties told WHRO this past February that the company was within two months of securing the money to fund a deal.
Spokespersons for both the company and the Navy say they have no new information to release.
Early in the year, Hunt Military Communities CEO Brian Stann said the company was seeking $1.4 billion in financing, and the Navy would put another $400 million into the deal.
The company would tear down old barracks, refurbish existing buildings and build new projects, including a plan to build new barracks outside Newport News Shipbuilding. Building better facilities for sailors assigned to ships in the shipyard was a recommendation of the Navy task force set up after the rash of suicides on board the USS Washington in 2022.
Though the idea was floated during the Biden Administration, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle released the “No Sailor Left Afloat” initiative this year to push the Navy to find space for the thousands of sailors who continue to live on ships, even after spending months at sea during increasingly long deployments.
Advocates have questions about expanding privatization. Several tenants have sued the companies the military hired to run family housing. The outcry over poor management pushed Congress to make changes, including creating a tenant’s bill of rights for military families.
Hunt Investment Properties is among the handful of companies that run military family housing around the world.
Though there have been privatization projects around the country, including in Hampton Roads and San Diego, the military continues to operate most of the barracks for their junior enlisted.
The Marines are the only service that has rejected privatization of its barracks and does not have even a pilot project.
