Don’t close door on military families who need housing

In general, the privatized redevelopment of military housing subdivisions in Hawaii and elsewhere has been successful, more efficiently improving the living quarters for members of the services and their families. This month’s episode involving the potential removal of a family from the Radford Terrace Navy community illuminates the gaps in that public-private relationship that must be bridged before similar circumstances arise elsewhere, as they almost certainly will.

Chad Carter, 36, is a sonar technician aboard the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon. The husband and father of three recently barricaded himself in his home and threatened suicide, prompting a 12-hour standoff with police. He was admitted to the Tripler Army Medical Center psychiatric ward after that and, according to his wife, will be in a civilian post-traumatic stress center for at least four weeks.

When the family was faced with the "non renewal" of their lease, an eviction consequence posed by the private management firm Forest City Military Communities, Navy officials intervened; however, a company executive told them Monday that the lease nonrenewal would stand.

Now the Navy has asserted in a statement to the Star-Advertiser that there is no imminent eviction and that the Navy and Forest City "are working together to help everyone involved." This is encouraging, an obvious relief to a wife coping with family responsibilities, including the care of an autistic child among the three.

But clearly what’s needed is an agreement that resolves the broader issue: Military housing areas are not simply private rentals where a landlord makes a simple decision on the renewal of a lease. There needs to be some constraints on unilateral actions by a management firm that affect military families, protocols that protect residents under strain.

That strain, of course, is the consequence of military deployments to Afghanistan and, before that, the Iraq war. Members of the armed forces confront that along with the other mortal dangers of their service. The duty of the government, for its part, is to provide the service members and their families with their basic needs. Regardless of what agency manages it, housing is one of those needs, and the military must hold up its end of the bargain.

The sad truth is that post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans is common, described in National Institutes of Health publications and other expert sources as an "epidemic." Manifestations of its effects can’t be ignored. Example: A separate barricade situation occurred last week in Moanalua Terrace military housing, in which an armed sailor threatened others before surrendering to police.

The clinical causes of each of these instances is unknown. Neither is it clear at this stage what precise contractual language should be forged by Forest City and the Navy to help the private company feel it has some protection from liability, particularly when a service member is getting care.

What matters is the plain fact that there are many families struggling in the context of long, repetitive war deployments, and they need some security on the home front. Both sides in this partnership need to come to terms that can deliver that security.