Sam Farr: “Several years ago, Congress authorized that instead of designing military housing, instead of funding and building it…”

“Several years ago, Congress authorized that instead of designing military housing, instead of funding and building it, essentially putting up taxpayers' money and then going out to bid and building it to a military plan, we decided why not allow the private sector to build this housing, build it more like the housing that is in the communities, higher quality housing, and build it to the standards that are normally found in the private sector in housing; and this was called the RCI, Residential Community Initiative. It has been a very effective program because we do not have to put up taxpayer money to do it. Through that, what we have found is that the private sector rushed in and put together these consortiums of developers and have done a job that is more attractive than anything we could have done under the old sort of public-military housing concept. And the soldiers and the wives of the soldiers are very, very interested. In fact, they came to our committee and said of all of the issues affecting the military, of all of the issues affecting families in the military, the number one issue was adequate housing.”