FORT RILEY, Kan. -- More than 300 housing officials from Department of Defense and privatized housing at military installations worldwide gathered for the annual Housing the Force training event at Fort Riley Aug. 28 to 31.
Representatives from Housing Service Offices; Residential Communities Initiatives, which handle privatized housing on installations; Privatized Army Lodging; Army Family Housing; and others attended the training. This year was the second time Fort Riley hosted Housing the Force.
"Housing the Force is an annual training event that the Army tries to do to bring housing professionals together to share best practices, learn new policy, engage with their peers and counterparts at different installations to see how they do business and try to ultimately improve how we do business and taking care of our Soldiers and providing a service for the housing needs of service members and their families," said Steve Milton, asset and housing manager for Fort Riley HSO.
During the training event, representatives attended classes and question and answer sessions with a housing leadership panel to discuss topics like budgets, adjustments in basic housing allowances for service members, manpower challenges, the energy conservation program, the waterfall program and more.
"We're offering about 72 courses over a four day period," said Connie Glenn, chief of the Installation Management Command Housing Branch.
Part of the success of Housing the Force comes from representatives sharing their problems, solutions and experiences with one another, Milton and Glenn both said.
"Housing managers are really generous with their knowledge," Glenn said. "They're really willing to share their experience so when housing professional goes up and says 'I have this problem with this kind of scenario or I don't know if this is allowed,' another person may have experienced that and said 'this is how we handle it.'"
Officials from across the Department of Defense were also brought in to offer their perspectives on common housing challenges and solutions.
"This year we invited my counterparts in the Air Force, Navy and the Marines and the Reserves just to see how they operate to try and take up some of the lessons that they've learned from their own man-power challenges and how their programs have evolved because they're in the same business we are," Glenn said.
During the second day, Paul Cramer, deputy assistance secretary of the Army (Installations, Housing and Partnerships) at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Installations, Energy and Environment), spoke to the audience briefly to discuss upcoming challenges and praise the representatives for the hard work they put into everything they do. He said this year the final house of the original 21-year RCI program was complete and now it was time to focus on reinvestment and evaluation of struggling areas and installations to move forward.
"We don't know what's coming on the next horizon, so we always have to be ready, so keep the fight and do what's needed in order to progress the cause of family housing of the garrison and services," he said.
A key area he spoke on was the waterfall program, a program that allows nonactive duty or military affiliated individuals to live in housing on installations so RCI partners do not have homes sitting empty. Fort Riley is not yet using the waterfall program, but nearly every other installation is to some capacity, Cramer said. He encouraged housing professionals to teach their garrison leadership about the precautions put in place for the waterfall program to ensure the safety of service members and their families.
"It's got a series of checks and balances on tenants who wish to live (on post)," he said while discussing the thorough background checks the tenants go through.
Cramer also praised Fort Riley for its participation in Operation Walking Shield in which several homes no longer used on post were donated to the Kickapoo Nation of Kansas to assist them with their housing needs.
Throughout the week, team building trips to Seitz Regional Training Campus and bus tours of housing available at Fort Riley gave officials time out of the classroom.
At Seitz, officials tackled some of the simulation training Soldiers at Fort Riley go through on a regular basis to help them step into a service member's shoes and understand more about their lives, Glenn said.
"When we go to Seitz, it gives housing managers an opportunity to kind of take a step or two in Soldier's boots and explain kind of in their own environment when they're coming to housing office with questions or needs and they're a little dirty and a little tired and a little irritated that their office environment is slightly different than our office environment, so it grows a little bit of empathy," she said.
This year's bus tour differed greatly from the windshield tour hosted by the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security at Fort Riley. Participants were brought to the historical Custer House, Quarters 4, a model home from Corvias -- Fort Riley's RCI partner -- and toured a barracks where they could talk with Soldiers residing there about their day-to-day living and the 1st Sergeant's Barrack Program.
Housing provides the stability Soldiers need in order to maintain moral and readiness, said Brig. Gen. William A. Turner, 1st Infantry Division deputy commander. Finding a home is one of the first things a Soldier does when they receive orders to a new installation and knowing their family has a roof over their head when they're deployed helps keep them from being distracted.
"You are the continuity," said Col. John Lawrence, United States Army Garrison Fort Riley commander, to the audience of housing professionals. "This suit and this job, I'll switch out in another year. I've only been here year, so I have two years to try and figure this all out, but what I do have is I have housing professionals that lead me through it and that is imperative because you're the ones that are going to foster relationships, you're the ones that are going to build teams with ACSIM, with your housing partners -- in our case Corvias -- you're the ones who are going to move the program forward and what it takes, it takes engaged leadership, not only on the green suit side, but also on the (Department of the Army) civilian side because your leadership is what takes the program to the next level."
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