A nearly $11 billion plan to overhaul Marine Corps barracks condition and maintenance by 2037 may have to ditch a component that would have placed staff noncommissioned officers in enlisted barracks to mentor Marines and maintain order.
Speaking at the Modern Day Marine Expo in Washington on Wednesday, Marine Corps Installations Command unaccompanied housing team lead Eric Mason said the program, which resembles a similar program in use by the Navy, had run into some “legality issues.”
“It seems that our Marine Corps legal team doesn’t see things the way the Navy sees them,” Mason said, “meaning that if we have a senior or staff personnel that lives in the barracks that are getting [basic allowance for housing], it requires them to have two entitlements. And they couldn’t get behind that. So our legal team is still looking at how we do this.”
A 2023 pilot program at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California, moved eight SNCOs into NCO barracks to help ensure barracks were kept up to Marine Corps standards.
“Resident advisors support the transition of Marines from dependency to independence, much as a college student undergoes the same transition,” Marine Corps Installations Command spokesman Maj. John Parry told Military.com at the time.
Mason told Marine Corps Times that MCICOM Sgt. Maj. Jason Hammock was working to troubleshoot the legal quandary and engaging in conversations with Navy officials about how to facilitate mentorship in the barracks.
One possible solution, he said, was to charge resident advisers a nominal fee, on the order of $100, to live in the barracks while still keeping their housing allowance.
“If that’s a possibility, we want to keep moving on this,” Mason said. “But a part of us is like, ‘Is this a housing issue, or is this a leadership issue? Do we worry about putting resident advisers in there from a housing perspective, or do we allow leadership to figure out how you increase your good order and discipline?’ … So, we’re not sure.”
While Mason said he expects decisions on that front within 90 days, the Corps is moving forward on other components of what Commandant Gen. Eric Smith has called Barracks 2030.
The Marine Corps, he said, is more than halfway through the process of replacing 532 active-duty enlisted “barracks managers” with 347 contracted and hired civilians to ensure sufficient focus on addressing maintenance issues and barracks quality of life. It’s also seeking nearly $11 billion over the next roughly 15 years to overhaul housing that reporting and a Government Accountability Office audit has shown to be “dilapidated,” with infestations of mold and other issues, Mason acknowledged.
In fiscal 2024, he said, the Marine Corps spent some $220 million to renovate 13 barracks housing 3,500 Marines, and bought $20 million worth of barracks furniture for 109 barracks. It has launched a pilot program at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, to make barracks door locks Common Access Card (CAC)-enabled, addressing a common safety concern, and launched a new reporting system whereby Marines can flag maintenance concerns using a QR code.
Housing planners also want to move barracks to a 10-year refresh cycle, Mason said, in contrast to the current 30-year cycle.
Acknowledging the outrage that has ensued when military leaders have blamed unlivable housing conditions on troops’ failures to maintain the spaces, Mason said both mentorship and responsiveness to reported housing problems were needed to fix barracks problems.
“A barracks room is probably one of the, if not the most, expensive equipment that a Marine is going to sign for, aside from their weapon, aside from their vehicle, aside from anything else,” he said. “We need to train them and prepare them the same way we do with their weapons. … And I am not pointing fingers at them, but we have an oversight issue as well. But partnering and doing these things together, I think, will bring a great outcome.”
