WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, introduced an amendment to the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would create a two-year pilot program to expedite the burdensome process that the U.S. Army must go through to dispose of buildings and structures that are no longer needed.

Under current law, the Army’s unwanted buildings must be offered to organizations that provide assistance to the homeless. While this provision is well-intended, and has helped provide shelter to hundreds, it hasn’t always met the needs of homeless organizations and the Army. For instance, many of the old Army buildings are not optimal for use by homeless shelters because they are too far away from public transportation or are located on still-active Defense Department property. In those cases, the Army is left with valuable resources that neither services the Army’s purposes nor benefits homeless assistance organizations. By removing unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles, Senator King’s amendment would save the Army valuable time and resources and maintain the promises we’ve made to homeless assistance providers to have first pick of the buildings that may be useable for their purposes.

“Allowing those who help the homeless to take advantage of unneeded government property makes sense and is the right thing to do – but too often we are making the government jump through bureaucratic hoops to offer property that has no conceivable chance of being taken. And that just wastes valuable resources and serves no one,” Senator King said. “My amendment is a common-sense provision that will allow the government to streamline the process for unloading these properties, saving time and money that’s needed elsewhere, while still preserving the right for homeless assistance organizations to take over usable buildings that will help them offer vital services in their communities.”

Under current law, all federal landholding agencies – including the U.S. Army under the Department of Defense – must make unwanted properties available to organizations that provide assistance to the homeless. Accordingly, the Army must report all of its unneeded properties to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) every quarter, after which HUD then offers them to state and local governments and non-profits for the purpose of aiding the homeless.

However, because many of the unwanted facilities sit on land still used by the Army, the facilities would have to be moved outside those boundaries for security reasons in order to be utilized. As a result, few homeless assistance providers have ever expressed interest in these properties. In fact, according to the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office (GAO), very few “off-site use only” properties across the government that were screened for homeless use since 1987 were acquired by homeless service providers – and that the majority of those that were conveyed were mobile structures, meaning that they could be easily transported off site.

According to a September 2014 GAO report, the Army says that its ability to dispose of its unneeded properties in an efficient manner is hampered by requirements that, although well-intended, do not seem appropriate to the nature of its inventory. The GAO agreed, citing the management of federal real property on its “High Risk List” since 2003. The list focuses on government operations that are at high risk due to their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement or the need for transformation to address economy, efficiency, or effectiveness challenges.

Senator King’s amendment would cut through the bureaucratic red tape to provide the Army with a two-year reporting exemption for the properties that are not available for on-site use. Rather than report those properties to HUD, the Army could better use its resources to offload the unwanted properties in a more efficient manner. Senator King’s amendment, however, preserves the reporting requirement for mobile property so that homeless assistance providers still have the ability to take advantage of unneeded mobile property, as has been the case historically, and his office worked with advocacy groups to ensure the amendment was properly tailored to meet their needs and not hamper their programs. If the pilot-program is successful in streamlining the property disposal process while protecting the interests of homeless, it could be made permanent.

For additional background information, click HERE.

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