Navy Orders Forcewide Housing Inspections After Secretary 'Appalled' by Guam Barracks Conditions
Military.com | By Drew F. Lawrence
Updated May 31, 2025 at 12:40pm ET | Published May 30, 2025 at 5:31pm ET
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.
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.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/05/30/navy-orders-forcewide-housing-inspections-after-secretary-appalled-guam-barracks-conditions.html
