Safe Military Housing Initiative, a 501c3 for military families
Safe Military Housing Initiative, 501c3, seeks to ensure safe and healthy homes for military families.
Safe Military Housing Initiative, 501c3, seeks to ensure safe and healthy homes for military families.
Your feedback is crucial in understanding the challenges and successes faced by military families in these environments.
By participating you allow us to see the real life experiences which help guide us ensuring attention is provided where it is needed most. Your voice matters!
*All responses are anonymous
Safe Military Housing Initiative (SMHI), a North Carolina 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, was established by military spouses advocating for military families who reside in unsafe/unhealthy housing. SMHI conservatively estimates that 30% or more of the 200,000+ military family homes either have—or are suspected—to have environmental hazards that can affect health adversely and structural problems that put a family's safety at risk.
SMHI focuses on two main tracks of advocacy:
Military families in distress who reach out to SMHI about their housing problems can connect with SMHI's caseworkers, who coordinate with the families and SMHI's partners and stakeholders to find solutions, including home assessments and remediation services for the families where applicable. SMHI caseworkers, who conduct walkthroughs of their clients' residences to document problems, have been coordinating with on-base housing management, PPVs, and remediators to help improve the housing conditions.
The 2019 Tenant Bill of Rights includes references in Point No. 12 to "prompt and professional maintenance and repair" and "repairs necessary to ensure habitability." Still, many families in military housing have reported that when they have managed to obtain remediation services, the work has been substandard or ineffective and does not solve their problems.
Some families experience additional distress when their reports of issues are not taken seriously, and their adverse health conditions continue.
SMHI is partnering with an independent company on a special project designed to provide participating military families the opportunity to diagnose their home's environmental and forensic conditions. Click here for more information on this exciting new venture.
Please consider donating to SMHI for this project!
Your donation can help participating military families obtain the scientific data they need at no cost to the families and enhance the chances of successfully resolving their housing-related problems to experience better health and improved quality of life.
Be a Military Housing Hero! Support the initiative to "Leave No Military Family in Unhealthy Homes."
Empty military home due to mold. 2023
"Although we are not done with our process yet I want to thank [SMHI] for everything. [They] helped me and my family in a short time by directing me to the right people to report our issues with Ft. Benning Housing. We are new here and [SMHI] was empathetic to our situation and has always been willing to help. Thanks to the contacts that [SMHI] provided me, we made significant progress in our process."
~A.N.
"Safe military housing was AMAZING for me! I had been fighting with CORVIAS over several issues for months, the latest one was uneven sagging floors. I believed they were caused by joists warping. CORVIAS and RCI refused to accept this as truth, even after I went in the crawlspace and obtained multiple pictures in multiple areas that showed that in places the joists were sagging, and in others they were coming up away from the beam. [SMHI] patently helped me wade through the weeds and got me in contact with the regional VP of CORVIAS and Chief of Housing at Fort Riley. Within days, the regional VP came to look at my issues herself. A couple days later, I was told I was going to be moved at their expense due the structural issues that were found."
~L.P.
"My family fought 8 months in raw sewage. We felt hopeless. Lead and asbestos positive home. The ppv representative had been beyond cruel to my family. SMHI stepped in and in 1 day accomplished more for my family then we had fighting for 8 months. They got us moved into a clean home when my children could finally heal from the issues caused living in toxic housing with raw sewage. As a lower enlisted family. We just couldn't do it ourselves and our command was being shut out by the PPV. The whole team has been a blessing and I don't know where my family would have ended up without them empowering us and fighting for us."
B.B.
"Jean Coffman for the win! We were finally able to get the ball rolling on our house. We got into a hotel late last night and my breathing is already improving. This group is heaven sent!"
S.P.
Your donation can help SMHI continue to help military families in unsafe/unhealthy homes resolve their housing-related problems so that they can experience better health and improved quality of life. Be a Military Housing Hero! Support the initiative to "Leave No Military Family in Unhealthy Homes!"
Donating is easy.
We accept checks payable to Safe Military Housing Initiative and mailed to:
8209 Market St. Unit A #266
Wilmington, North Carolina. 28411.
You can also donate directly via our PayPal giving fund by clicking on the donate now button below.
SMHI's tax ID number is 83-4255045
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