Black mold, busted air conditioning, uncooked chicken and paint in the eggs – shocking conditions not from a migrant shelter, but military barracks here in the US.
The men and women who protect the country often endure tough conditions in makeshift accommodations overseas, but they are also being subjected to awful lapses in service where they live and work in this country, pictures show.
“I’ve heard stories about toilets not working, bugs in the rooms, overcrowding. There was an issue reported last week about air conditioners not working [at Fort Liberty, in North Carolina]. The temperature in the room was over 90 degrees,” says Robert Evans, founder of website Hots&Cots.
“The military is hard. Going to the [battle] field or being deployed is hard. But your place of residence should not be hard. Having good food should not be hard. That is a low bar to have for our service members protecting our country,” he added.
Evans, himself a veteran, started his site over a year ago to showing the best and worst of armed-forces living, likening it to a Yelp for military facilities, with reviews and photos sent in by enlistees. Much of what makes the site shows the ugly side of military domesticity.
Confirming some of his findings, a soldier stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, told The Post about an AC unit leaking to the point that “the floor made a squishy noise when I walked on it.”
He called for it to be repaired and “I was told that I could make it run less [to mitigate the leaking, though it would not do much for the heat] and put in a window unit as well.
“I bought the window unit and was then told I could not have one. But I didn’t want to sweat at home. So I put it in anyway and bought a fan to circulate air.”
The soldier added that “none of the washing machines work in my building” and he “got moved out of a unit because of black mold … and then moved into a room so filthy that it took five buckets of water to clean a place smaller than a studio apartment.”
Evans, a third-generation military man, was inspired to launch Hots&Cots – a reference to the three hot meals and sleeping cots members of the military are promised – in hope of notifying service men and women about the most desirable places in which to request being stationed as well as least desirable spots, so they can try and avoid them.
Underscoring the importance of this, he points out people enlist in the services with hopes for better lives than they have on the outside.
Not finding that, he said, “is tough on service members’ morale. They deal with not having a decent quality of life on top of [the possibility of] deployment. I’ve talked to service members who are at the end of their rope.”
According to Andrea Kelly, an Army spokesperson, “The Army is committed to providing safe, healthy, high-quality living conditions for our soldiers and their families.
“For barracks, we’re dedicating $2.1 billion annually from fiscal years 2026 to 2030 to sustain, restore and modernize Army-wide.”
As per Evans: “Something needs to be done sooner rather than later.”
The army’s statement is cold comfort to many families in military housing who must contend with sub-standard living conditions on top of pressures that are broader and more amplified than they are for singles.
“A civilian marriage isn’t easy, and then you add the challenges of military living and things become even more stressful,” Heather Hall, CEO and founder of Military Housing Coalition, an advocacy group trying to improve standards of living for families in the military, told The Post.
Having raised a family in military housing, Hall added, “I experienced mold and water intrusion. We had a failed [AC unit] that overcompensated and a bathtub leak.”
“We had to be removed from the house for a week-and-a-half and live in a hotel. The family was displaced,” Hall said.
One soldier at Fort Stewart in Georgia wasn’t so lucky when his room had a case of black mold, certain types of which can be toxic.
“The room across from me had black mold so bad that the soldier in there had to be hospitalized,” a Fort Stewart source told The Post.
“He had been in there for just a week, after coming in from South Korea, where they have better resources for fixing s—t.”
Though he has not needed medical care himself, the source added, “You can feel the air quality when you are inside. The mold is in the air ducts. It hurts your lungs. I don’t breathe the same.”
Evans was sent a photo of a bathroom with a live wasp nest and has seen photos of rusty water coming out of barrack faucets – “They get told that the water is safe and normal even though it is brown,” said the Colorado source.
“Then some of the leaders go home to where there is clear water and air conditioning” – but, the Hots&Cots founder told The Post, it is tough to top some of mess hall preparations for wretchedness.
“Raw chicken is the worst for me; you get so many diseases from eating raw chicken,” he said citing stomach-churning food photos he has been sent of half-cooked poultry.
Noting some bases have exceptional meal set-ups – including one with a smoothie bar – Evans added, “There was an issue at Fort Sam Houston [Texas] where there were specks of mold in the dessert.” Elsewhere, he added, “There were paint chips in eggs. I’ve seen a range of stuff with the food.”
Bad as all this sounds, Alissa Czyz, a director at the Government Accountability Office, told The Post the repercussions go beyond discomfort.
“It effects the readiness of service members as well as recruitment and retention [of service people],” said Czyz.
“People don’t want to send their children to go and live in substandard conditions or to re-enlist.”
