Hegseth promises to fix barracks, but work could take time

By Brett Rowland
The Center Square

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has pledged to tackle longstanding issues with U.S. military barracks that have frustrated troops, lawmakers, and taxpayers for decades.

In a recent social media post, Hegseth flipped through a 118-page Government Accountability Office report from 2023 that detailed problems with military barracks, where the most junior enlisted service members reside.

“For far too long, this department has failed too many of our warfighters,” Hegseth said. “Every member of our joint force deserves housing that is clean, comfortable and safe.”

Update on the Barracks Task Force. pic.twitter.com/46KBNFTFz7— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) November 26, 2025

The 2023 GAO report drew attention to sewage backups, mold, inoperable fire safety systems, broken heating and air conditioning systems, brown tap water, rodent infestations, and other issues at barracks where troops are required to live during training.

“This isn’t just about creature comforts. This impacts morale, readiness and our ability to recruit and retain the best warriors. Quality of life for our warriors is a critical component of reviving the warrior ethos and rebuilding our military,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth blamed the problems on the previous administration, but the GAO report said that such conditions had existed for decades despite past attempts to address them, including taxpayer-funded investments and privatization efforts.

The GAO report found that the Pentagon lacked oversight of the problems, did not know how much was spent on barracks, and that the department’s own assessments of the conditions in its barracks were unreliable.

Earlier this year, Hegseth created a barracks task force that reports directly to him.

“We’ve completed wall-to-wall assessments across the entire Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, and the 18th Airborne Corps,” Hegseth said. “And inspections are underway in the Army Reserves and National Guard.”

Hegseth said those would be completed by the end of January 2026.

He didn’t say if the Pentagon had changed the way it evaluates barracks. The Pentagon did not respond to questions from The Center Square about its latest assessments. The GAO report found the Pentagon’s assessments of conditions within its facilities were faulty. Military services calculate a condition score, ranging from 0 to 100, for each facility. However, those scores don’t always align with the actual conditions.

“We observed barracks at seven of 10 military installations we visited that appeared to require significant improvement, despite condition scores above 80,” according to the GAO report. “The scores indicated that barracks were in fair or good condition. For example, at one installation, we toured a barracks facility that had been closed for renovation due to long-standing plumbing and electrical issues. According to installation officials, the barracks were uninhabitable. However, at the time the barracks closed, its condition score was above 90, according to service documentation.”

The GAO made 31 recommendations in the barracks report. The Pentagon agreed with 23 of those recommendations and partially concurred with eight more. As of December 2025, 16 of those recommendations remained open and unaddressed, according to the GAO report.

Hegseth decried bureaucracy, saying it was a “find and fix” mission rather than something that required additional study.

Hegseth said that the Department of War was investing $1.2 billion to improve conditions in the barracks. The task force has $400 million to direct immediate work and $800 million for critical renovations, Hegseth said.

U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and chaired a hearing on problems in the barracks in 2023, said it was time to take action.

“I am optimistic that these funds will begin to address the long-standing and well-documented issues with our military barracks, and I hope that the Pentagon will continue to update its internal methodologies for assessing needs and listen more to outside groups that highlight areas for improvement they are missing,” Bacon told The Center Square. “The recently announced task force is a positive step, but I remain concerned that they are still studying the problem when there are clear needs that exist today.”

Bacon said he’s watching.

“We gave the Defense Department over a billion dollars in the reconciliation bill this year to address this issue. I led the Quality of Life panel that identified the needs, so I firmly believe that the time for studying is over and the time for action is now,” he told The Center Square. “These funds are only the first step in rectifying the issue of the abysmal conditions that we are forcing our all-volunteer force to live under, and I remain committed to providing oversight to make sure that Secretary Hegseth moves out as fast as he is saying to fix the problems.”

The GAO report found the Department of War had not fully funded its facilities program for years, resulting in a backlog of at least $137 billion in deferred maintenance costs as of fiscal year 2020, according to the report. That figure was spread across all facilities, not limited to barracks.

During testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in 2023, Elizabeth Field, director of Defense Capabilities and Management for the GAO, informed committee members that 20 years prior, the GAO had identified similar issues. Ten years ago, in a report to Congress, the Pentagon praised the progress it had made in modernizing barracks with more funding. It promised to maintain those barracks.

“Obviously, that didn’t happen,” Field said at the time.

Fields also told the committee the problems would require a sustained effort to fully address the issues.

“It will take years to reverse the chronic neglect and underfunding we uncovered,” she said.

She said the problem wasn’t with Congressional funding, but with how the Department of War chose to use that money.

“The department tends to only fund about 80% of sustainment needs and the facilities that most often lose out are things like barracks,” she said.

Another problem was the lack of accountability, Field said.

“I think there has been a cultural perspective within the department that part of being in the military is toughing it out and ‘this is just going to get them ready for the military’ and unfortunately that has gotten us, in part, to where we are today,” she said.

Hegseth rejected that attitude.

“Barracks, that’s where our warriors live, rest and recover. How can we expect them to be ready for anything on the battlefield when their own living space is a constant source of stress and frustration?” the Secretary of War said.

When asked how much it would cost to get the barracks up to par in 2023, Field said there wasn’t an easy answer, in part because the Department of War doesn’t know how much it spends on barracks and its assessments of the conditions of those barracks were unreliable.

The Department of War did not respond to questions from The Center Square regarding how long it would take to bring the barracks up to department standards or whether the $1.2 billion in the most recent budget bill would be sufficient to complete the work. The department also did not respond to a question on whether anyone would be held responsible for the longstanding problems.