The Pentagon’s a slumlord to America’s heroes

Military personnel are stuck in slum-level housing across the United States — one more reason the Pentagon can’t hit its recruiting and retention goals. As The Post reports, the Hots&Cots website exposes toxic and dangerous housing conditions , including black mold, broken air conditioning and uncooked food, at US military barracks and family housing from New Jersey to North Carolina to Texas to Colorado. Robert Evans founded the site over a year ago to show the best and worst of armed-forces living.

It posts photos showing live wasp nests in a shower, rusty water coming from a faucet, black mold on ceilings and vents and broken washing machines. That corroborates other reports of how shoddy Pentagon contracting sticks some military families in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, including toxic mold, lead paint and vermin infestations. It’s bad enough that some military families are reduced to food stamps; worse to see that the ginormous Defense Department is a slum lord .



“It affects the readiness of service members as well as recruitment and retention,” Government Accountability Office chief Allyssa Czyz told The Post. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is obsessed with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training — which also drives away recruits and active-duty personnel. Whoever wins the next election needs to set the Defense Department straight: Social engineering needs to take a back seat to the basics of actual military training and ensuring decent living conditions on the home front.

Put the military bureaucrats responsible for these conditions on latrine duty..