Military families living in mould-infested homes: Ombudsman

[klacquement]

In a strange coincidence of timing, I'm going through the same thing right now.

OTTAWA - Facing cries for help from families of Canadian soldiers, military ombudsman Pierre Daigle said he is stepping in to help.

QMI Agency has learned Daigle has launched a top-to- bottom review of Department of National Defence policies that affect soldiers' family life.

"We're going to be talking to military families and looking at the care and treatment they have received throughout their experience with the Canadian Forces," said Daigle in a statement posted online Thursday morning.

Among the issues he'll examine will be decrepit housing on military bases.

Daigle said he was shocked by what he saw when he visited a soldier's wife who had seven kids.

"It was the cleanest house I've ever seen," Daigle told QMI Agency. "But you know what? Every week she was scrubbing the mould from the window with a toothbrush to make sure that it will not affect the health of her kids."

More at the article

 

[PMedMoe]

a soldier's wife who had seven kids

No wonder they can't afford to live outside of PMQs. 

 

[PuckChaser]

PMQs are "fair" market value now, they aren't a cheap housing alternative now.

 

[PMedMoe]

PMQs are "fair" market value now, they aren't a cheap housing alternative now.

You're right, but most people will say they can't afford the downpayment for a house.  Yet they have all the "toys".

 

[Delaney1986]

They are pretty cheap in Oromocto. It's the bloody natural gas that kills us! Thank goodness for equalized billing! 

 

[fraserdw]

Someone should have been court-martialed of the natural gas forced on folks in the Qs in Gagetown!  What horrible thing to force on people you are charged with looking after!

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Fraserdw-

I lived in the RHUs in Gagetown when they had oil furnaces.  Believe me, that was no bargain.  And there was the added risk of oil tank ruptures or the oil company flooding basements by over filling tanks (which seemed to happen at least once per year).

The switch to natural gas at Gagetown was very welcome, when it happened.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Someone should have been court-martialed of the natural gas forced on folks in the Qs in Gagetown!  What horrible thing to force on people you are charged with looking after!

Speak english please.

 

[chriscalow]

Hope this has some influence soon. I'm going through a fight with CFHA in Pet right now for this. Wife and son already left.

 

[klacquement]

Hope this has some influence soon. I'm going through a fight with CFHA in Pet right now for this. Wife and son already left.

So far this week, I've spent 2 days in a hotel and 3 in an emergency PMQ, with the emergency Q extended now until Monday (at least).  Last month I spent a week in the emergency house, while they did a half-assed job of half the job.

 

[exabedtech]

Back in the day when I lived on Antwerp at Pet I recall CE coming to repair a broken front door jamb by inserting a length of hockey stick and securing it with 3" screws that went right through the glass side light beside the door.  They told me "at least the door jamb is fixed!" and left.  Never did fix that side light.
As bad as CE was, contracting has been no better and CFHA has no one to blame but themselves.  These days i'm on the other side of the fence and actually considered bidding for a PMQ maintenance contract until I read it.  What a joke!  Only a moron or a criminal would bid on something like that.
I get the basic premise of having an SOA with a contractor, but whoever writes these things clearly has no idea how the real world functions.  If they'd simply hire a company to do work and then inspect that work to determine whether they'd received fair value, they would do much better.  If they get good service and good work, call him back the next time otherwise call someone else.  SOA forces them to keep calling the same jackass that screwed them over the last time.

Just my opinion, but it seems that the entire process DND/PWGSC uses to deal with contractors strongly encourages deceit.  Fixing the system would really be as easy as firing the 10-20 staff they use to manage their crappy maintenance and hire ONE competent maintenance supervisor who knows how to use a phone and 2 or 3 contract inspectors who are red-seal tradesmen to supervise the work.  Give the contracts department a budget and let them decide for themselves how best to manage things.  The current system handcuffs everyone into using a guy who will give you an unrealistic hourly and call out charge only to blatantly lie about how many hours a project took.

Who is really the better deal?  The honest guy who tells you his rate is $80 an hour and does the job in 2 hours and bills you $160.00 or the guy who tells you his rate is $40 an hour (to get the SOA for the year) and then bills you 8 hours for the same thing? 
CFHA and DND in general are simply getting exactly what they asked for.... dishonest contractors.

 

[TN2IC]

My kids were always sick when we live in our amazing PMQ. After a tour, I went out and bought my own home. Kids seem to be fine now. Go figure.

 

[birdgunnnersrule]

PMQs have many issues, however, they serve a very important purpose for folks that may not, for various reasons, want to buy or live away from the base.  My wife finds it very interesting since CFHA told us the reason we had mould at one PMQ was because we were not cleaning properly.  It was not related to the poor ventilation, old windows, or lack of insulation.  Bleach and any home made remedy we could find was our friend.

 

[Jarnhamar]

CFHA are a bunch of morons.

It's criminal that they are still in business wheeling and dealing.

Great the Ombudsman recognized that something screwy is going on-it's what 20 or 30 years late?

 

[PuckChaser]

My wife finds it very interesting since CFHA told us the reason we had mould at one PMQ was because we were not cleaning properly.  It was not related to the poor ventilation, old windows, or lack of insulation.  Bleach and any home made remedy we could find was our friend.

That's their fallback response, because quite frankly some of people's issues are caused by just that. But they use it before looking at the house.

I think the problem with CFHA is that some of the homes are junk when people move in, so they don't care about maintaining them while they are there because CFHA didn't care enough to fix them before they moved in. Its a vicious cycle, and I've seen it with the student housing at Queen's. Crap house = inconsiderate tenants, which makes the house crappier, etc etc. The nicer student housing that was just built never has garbage around it or wild house parties.

 

[klacquement]

PMQs have many issues, however, they serve a very important purpose for folks that may not, for various reasons, want to buy or live away from the base.  My wife finds it very interesting since CFHA told us the reason we had mould at one PMQ was because we were not cleaning properly.  It was not related to the poor ventilation, old windows, or lack of insulation.  Bleach and any home made remedy we could find was our friend.

They tried that with us.  Fortunately, we were able to get someone in, who noticed that the same spot in the bottom corner of the cupboard kept growing mold.  Then we convinced him cut open the wall.  The growth behind that was definitely beyond our household cleaning scope.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Two new bits of info to add to the discussion:

1)  A Toronto Star story about how some government buildings (including PMQ's) are in bad shape - apparently (and I stand to be corrected) drawn from this inventory* - here's what the article has to say about DND properties:

Nearly 5,000 federal buildings and homes are in serious disrepair, a national database shows.

(....)

Also topping the list:

• More than 2,300 National Defence buildings, including housing for soldiers and their families on military bases in Ontario and beyond.

(....)

Of 2,302 military buildings operated by the Department of National Defence, 665 are housing units in poor condition.

A hundred of the Canadian military’s substandard housing units are at Camp Borden, 15 kilometres west of Barrie. The base has 744 homes in total.

On a street called Walcheren Loop, an army wife who shares a two-storey home with her husband and children told the Star she has been waiting nearly four years for the Canadian Forces Housing Agency to fix the wonky concrete steps that lead to her backyard.

“Whenever I ask, they always say it’s about budget,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used.

The Department of National Defence said plans to repair, demolish or replace housing are prioritized case by case.

“Tactical priorities, funding availability, as well as the assets’ overall condition, suitability, compliance and utilization levels are also taken into consideration,” DND spokeswoman Nancy Cook said in an email ....

and

2)  The results of a quick MERX search of at least some** of the tendered work done on PMQ's since 2005 (22 page PDF)

* - Caveat:  I couldn't make the search parameters match the story's almost 5K "in serious disrepair", even when searching for "unknown", "poor" and "critical" properties - and that's assuming worst case for the "unknowns".
** - I did a quick search of "married quarters" in the text of the MERX postings.

 

[mad dog 2020]

Funny Borden is mentioned.  I was in the Q's there in the early 90's and Between base housing and CE it was a sad joke on their concern for fiscal responsibility.
My eventual Q, sat vacant for at least 6 weeks and they paid for me and my family to stay in a hotel for 73 days. 
CE was not a focus driven organization, but the housing office was just plain corrupt.
There was a $250 dollar claim for cleaning your Q when you left andnyou could do it yourself (multiple times, before it passed inspection or just give up) or pay housing to make the arrangements.
Odd, the standard they demanded of you was unrealistic considering while the Q was empty CE would come in and do a complete inspection and repairs before the next resident.  In many cases the place appeared to never being cleaned and where did the $250 go you gave housing. 
Some jobs for repair were unrealistic for example pay 2 guys to come pull a bedroom door, take it back to the shop, and refinish it and then 2 more guys to return and reinstall it or now adays just buy a new one from Home depot and remove and replace in one shot.  Major labour savings.
Always wondered who oversees the contractors as did no one notice when the South side Q's were built backwards.
I still go to Borden and see how many Q's have been removed.  I remember due to the fact we didn't have basements everyone had at least one shed and the DND issued us one starting around 92.
I always recall the old joke about: What's yellow and black and sleeps six?  A CE crew cab.
So after all these years of neglect it is now an issue.  Funny, the neighbourhood depicted was considered the officers lines and we thought they had it better than us. 
Hope it works out.

 

[klacquement]

There was a $250 dollar claim for cleaning your Q when you left andnyou could do it yourself (multiple times, before it passed inspection or just give up) or pay housing to make the arrangements.
Odd, the standard they demanded of you was unrealistic considering while the Q was empty CE would come in and do a complete inspection and repairs before the next resident.  In many cases the place appeared to never being cleaned and where did the $250 go you gave housing.

When I moved from one PMQ to another, I was charged for some damage. My wife met the new tenants and discovered that none of the damage had been repaired. Again, where did the money go?

 

[heavy reader]

When we lived in Rockliffe we had a severe mould problem. Cleaned each week with straight bleach to no avail. Eventually, they closed the base and relocated all military personnel out of the PMQ's. Then the government used the PMQ's for refugees who complained that they were not suitable to live in!

We also had lead in the water which was "above the Canadian acceptable limits" but was justified as being "below the American safe limits". 

Get out while you have your health.