Fort Hood sees housing improvements reflected in recent survey

By Dave Larsen, Fort Hood Public AffairsSeptember 8, 2022

Patton Park playground
While a playground in Patton Park at Fort Hood, Texas, is empty as children attend school, Sept. 6, this community has reason to celebrate after being named one of 47 Army housing areas to earn an "A-List Award for Customer Service Excellence." Fort Hood's Venable Village also earned that honor. (Photo Credit: Blair Dupre, Fort Hood Public Affairs) VIEW ORIGINAL

“Our people deserve quality housing. We know there is more work to do, but we are making repairs more quickly, hiring more staff to oversee our housing contracts and working with our housing companies to invest more than a billion dollars of their funds into more renovations and new development.” ~ Christine Wormuth, Secretary of the Army

FORT HOOD, Texas — The Army recently released the results from its 2022 Tenant Satisfaction Survey. In that survey, while Army-wide there was a slight decline in the satisfaction scores, Fort Hood saw marked improvement in every area.

“Clearly, this a result of a significant amount of work that has been ongoing … especially in the last year-and-a-half,” Col. Chad R. Foster, commander, U.S. Army Garrison - Fort Hood said Tuesday morning. “I’ve been able to see a lot of great efforts made by leaders and teammates at all levels, within Fort Hood Family Housing and also within our Directorate of Public Works as they labor to provide a level of oversight and partnership necessary to get us where we need to be, to provide the best housing possible to our military families.”

Foster said he was most happy to see gains in customer service from the survey.

“That’s where you make your biggest impact,” he said. “If you have good and clear communication with families about what’s going on, you tend to get good results.”

With an overall service satisfaction score of 76%, Fort Hood exceeded the Army average of 74.9% and improved its score by 4.8% from the previous survey. Two of Fort Hood’s on-post family housing areas — Patton Park and Venable Village — achieved an “A-List Award for Customer Service Excellence.”

To achieve the honor, the community must have met an 85% satisfaction rate with more than a 20% response rate from the survey. Just 47 housing areas reached this level Army-wide.

Foster credited the partnerships created — between the installation, tenant units, its commercial leasing agencies and residents — as a major reason for the success.

“There’s really no way, with this kind of a large endeavor you can make any positive progress without it being a partnership,” Foster said. “There’s also a level of accountability to that, too, that I think is very important.

“I would single out the Resident Advisory Board as one of the most important innovations,” Foster stressed. “(It) allows our residents to have a regular voice in communicating their concerns … and also being part of solutions. They have been a positive, contributing body to finding new ways to do certain things that really helped us.”

Foster said the future of on-post family housing will only get better as new structures are built due to the $420 million commitment to Fort Hood by Lendlease, Inc.

“With new homes, certainly, the level of satisfaction with the quality of the houses themselves is going to go up,” he said. “That’s something we really look forward to seeing, in the near future, the impact of that investment.

“But I also think that what’s helped us … is our ongoing renovation process,” Foster added. “Every time we do that, we increase the quality of our housing.”

To view the entire survey results, go to https://www.army.mil/e2/downloads/rv7/qualityoflife/housing/army_rci_2022-08_dod_tenant_satisfaction_survey_summary-residential_communities_initiative.pdf

“I don’t think any of us involved with this will say that we’re satisfied, because we’re not. I think if you asked anybody over there at Fort Hood Family Housing, they would say, ‘Yeah, it’s great. We’re happy about it,’ but I know that they, along with everyone on the Army side, know that we need to continue to be focused because we have more work to do,” the garrison commander said.

“I’m confident,” Foster added, “that we’re going to continue to make strides.”