Navy Secretary John Phelan visited Guam earlier this month and was “appalled” after seeing the conditions of an Air Force barracks where junior service members were living, prompting an ongoing Navy-wide inspection of more than 100,000 barracks units, according to a government watchdog and service officials.
Conditions included exposed wires, corroded plumbing and dilapidated walls splattered with paint to cover mold; after Phelan’s visit, more than 70 Marines and sailors were moved out of the Palau Hall barracks, a housing facility at Andersen Air Force Base. Another 77 airmen there are “in the process of being relocated” in anticipation of a $53 million renovation scheduled to start later this year, an Air Force spokesperson told Military.com on Friday.
The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, obtained images of the squalid housing and correspondence sent by the Navy’s head of installations, who ordered all regional commands to inspect their barracks by the end of May.
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The Navy official, Vice Adm. Scott Gray, noted that the Palau Hall barracks were “way outside of any reasonable standard” and that the conditions were “a failure of leadership across multiple echelons of command,” according to the documents.
Not all of the inspections have been completed, the Navy told Military.com Friday, but are expected to be finished by the end of June.
Following his visit May 1-2, Phelan ordered Marines and sailors be moved out of the Air Force-owned barracks within 10 days and that new housing aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz be opened about a month ahead of schedule in response to the squalid conditions, according to POGO and confirmed by the Navy.
“I actually thought the buildings were condemned,” Phelan told POGO in an interview. “When we pulled up to them and saw what shape they’re in, I was shocked.”
Days later, on May 5, Gray sent the email, with photos of the barracks conditions attached, directing the worldwide inspection and adding that “if you would not want a sailor’s mother/family visiting them at the housing unit, then you have a problem that needs to be addressed. Fix It!”
The inspections are meant to “ensure our sailors are residing in unaccompanied housing that meet living standards regardless [of] if they are Navy-owned or not,” Leslie Gould, the Fleet and Family Readiness director for the service’s installation command, told Military.com in an emailed statement Friday.
Palau Hall is Air Force-owned, but it is not uncommon for troops from different branches to stay in cross-service housing. The Navy’s inspection includes barracks where sailors are living, but that are operated by other branches.
There are more than 104,000 unaccompanied housing units across the Navy, Gould said. They are given a “red, yellow or green” designator following a multi-leader inspection of the barracks’ exterior, common areas such as kitchens and laundry rooms, and quarters, according to Gray’s email.
Within the “yellow” category, Gray urged leaders to apply the “Washington Post test,” meaning that “if the pictures you have taken or the results of your assessment conducted of a particular facility were published online tomorrow, would you be able to personally justify sailors living there?”
Gould said that housing facilities deemed to be “red” will result in a sailor being immediately removed from the barracks. Those identified as “yellow” will be prioritized for restoration.
She said that there are currently no sailors or Marines living in Air Force-owned barracks on Guam, having been relocated to Blaz facilities, and that the Joint Region Marianas commander, Rear Adm. Brett Mietus, inspected all other barracks on the U.S. territory and found that they were not “below standards.”
René Kladzyk, a senior investigator at POGO and former reporter El Paso Matters in Texas, told Military.com in a phone interview Friday that her reporting stemmed from a tip the organization received this month.
“I think it’s pretty well known that the problems in barracks conditions are quite pervasive. It’s not unique to Guam,” she said. “When talking about barracks conditions, often we’re talking about single, more junior service members who may be in a culture where they are kind of told or taught that they should just be willing to tough it out.”
“Exposed wiring has very real fire hazard risks. Mold can have a range of severe health impacts that often can be really hard to directly tie,” she added. “It’s worth mentioning that there are very serious dangers connected to not maintaining housing facilities.”
The Marine Corps announced last month that Marines and sailors began relocating into new barracks at Camp Blaz from Andersen, citing testimony from troops calling it a “huge upgrade,” but did not disclose that the move was a result of poor conditions at Palau Hall.
“Luckily, we were in a position to move them out of the Air Force barracks into the brand new built Marine Corps barracks,” Capt. Brenda Leenders, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, told Military.com on Friday, adding that “there are nine [barracks facilities] still in the construction phase” on Guam.
Barracks conditions for junior troops have been squalid for years as many service leaders recognized that upkeep and funding for their living conditions fell by the wayside as pressing operational needs took priority during 20 years of the Global War on Terrorism.
In 2023, the Government Accountability Office found that barracks across the services were infested by mold, rodents, raw sewage and general dilapidation, leaving tens of thousands of young troops in substandard living conditions.
While many of the services have said they are continuing to prioritize and fund fixing and building new barracks, Military.com reported on Wednesday that the Pentagon will shift $1 billion meant for Army barracks maintenance and renovation to its southern border mission.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” legislation working through Congress, meant to help enact President Donald Trump’s agenda, allocates another roughly $1 billion for barracks maintenance and improvements. But that funding would be split between the Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force, resulting in “a net loss here for them on an uphill battle for quality-of-life initiatives,” Rob Evans, creator of Hots & Cots, an app where service members can leave reviews about facilities, told Military.com on Friday.
“They are all impacted by this, and I would love to hear some sort of steps forward on what the secretary of defense’s agenda is for addressing this stuff because this will impact retention and this will impact recruiting,” he added.
The Air Force spokesperson said that the service “is committed to providing safe and adequate living conditions for its service members,” adding that it is prioritizing barracks restoration as part of a “4-year Dorm Master Plan” and had allocated roughly $115 million to four dormitories at Andersen. They noted that Typhoon Mawar in 2023 caused severe damage to facilities there.
The service has a $49.5 billion backlog in maintenance and repair efforts, Michael Saunders, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy, installations and environment, recently told Congress.
In recent years, service leaders have tied troop quality-of-life conditions to urgent strategic efforts, recruiting and retention. Guam, located in the Western Pacific, is also a key strategic asset for the military’s ability to project power amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and China.
“Maintenance and repair funding levels have not kept pace with the rising cost of construction, leading to compounding sustainment costs, widespread degradation, and increases in infrastructure issues that adversely impact mission execution,” Saunders said in a statement to the House Armed Services Committee, noting that those conditions make “installations vulnerable to adversaries and [place] mission generation at risk.”
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