Washington D.C. – Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland (WA – 10) strongly advocated for increased on-base housing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) and raised concerns about cuts to military programs that support energy resilience and operational readiness.
Strickland’s remarks are transcribed below, and can be viewed here:
Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland: Thank you, Chairman Bergman.
As you all heard earlier, I represent Joint Base Lewis-McChord and since the day I arrived in Congress I have talked about housing. So you will hear me talk about housing so much you’ll get tired of it – which means the message is finally sinking in.
But I’m very pleased, Mr. Klippstein, that the new Secretary of the Army visited JBLM during one of his very first visits to an Army installation. And one of the issues I discussed extensively is just the need to build more housing on post. I was honored to attend the groundbreaking of an additional 200 homes at JBLM, but we need an additional 860 homes by 2027. And this was an assessment that the Army did itself.
On March 3rd, I sent you a letter on the ongoing housing crisis at JBLM and the need to find creative solutions to addressing this issue, including exploring enhanced-use lease. It’s very unfortunate that I just received my response the day of the originally scheduled hearing. In your response letter, you state that you continue to monitor the housing waiting list at JBLM and that it supposedly does not show a need for more housing. However, when the housing waiting list was over 700 families, the Army stated that the housing waiting list was not an accurate reflection of the housing need at that base and we need to rely on the housing market assessment.
I can tell you that the Puget Sound region that I represent already has a housing crunch outside of military. It’s why the cost of housing is so high – because the supply is not meeting the demand. So it feels as though the Army keeps moving the goalposts, and we’re failing the servicemembers at JBLM. And to be honest with you, full transparency – this started back in 2021 when I first got here. This is not even indicative of an Administration. But we have a chance to make some progress.
So Mr. Klippstein, can you tell me more about the Army’s strategy to build additional homes at JBLM – and something more specific other than, “we’re looking into it and we’re monitoring it”. The need for this housing is not going to go away. This is a rapidly growing region. This is a quality-of-life issue. And if we don’t address it with urgency – especially given the fact that we want to increase the defense budget by 150 billion dollars – talk to me about what we’re going to do.
Daniel Klippstein: Congresswoman Strickland, thank you for the question and thank you for acknowledging the receipt of the response to the letter. I would tell you that, working with our housing provider there, we’re trying to expand the number of houses. In 2027, we’re looking to target about 100 million dollars of equity contribution to the housing provider to build out the extra 245 homes that are there.
Additionally, there’s a piece of land that’s outside the facility. We’re looking at that as an enhanced-use lease opportunity to give that to the senior commander at the installation, and we’ll work with him to sort out how to continue to move forward to use that land to increase the housing opportunities. We recognize that quality housing in the JBLM area is a challenge, and we’re going to continue to work with you, your office, and with the local community to improve those opportunities.
Strickland: Thank you, I appreciate that. I’m going to switch over to the topic of climate change now.
So, under the heading of efficiency – and sadly driven by ideology – Secretary Hegseth is canceling or drastically cutting important readiness programs that happen to have a benefit to climate change. As applied his decree that the department, and I quote, “does not do climate change crap” is curbing innovation, making installations less able to continue their mission during energy interruptions or in the wake of natural disasters, and is generally making the department less ready to fight and win.
Mr. Klippstein, in February, General George talked about the fact that the Army’s drones did not perform well in cold environments due to lower-than-life expectancy battery life. I understand that the Army has had several advanced battery R&D programs designed to increase cold weather battery life, as well as lower dependence on foreign-sourced critical minerals. Would you agree that these programs are important readiness enablers, and what are you doing to advocate for these programs?
Klippstein: Congresswoman, thank you. I think it’s clear that the Army’s invested in finding all types of energy opportunities and trying to figure out how to improve the resiliency and the extension of life for batteries for our soldiers, and to improve the resiliency on our installations. I’ll need to take, for the record, the question on drones and come back to you.
Strickland: All right, thank you. Mr. Chairman I yield back.
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