By Kevin Lavery, KWMU
Scott Air Force Base, ILL. – Scott Air Force Base, in the Metro East, is getting ready for a major housing expansion.
The Air Force will hire a private company to build about 500 new houses off base and renovate a yet unknown number of on base homes.
The plan is part of an Air Force-wide initiative that's expected to save the government $7 billion. Tanya Winters, who lives on base, hopes that wherever her family is relocated, they'll still have the same amenities they have now.
"Our housing is substandard but we have playgrounds for our children, we have safe places for them to play, we have monitoring," she said. "I wouldn't give those things up. I want to make sure we have new housing with all of those things."
Construction is set to begin in the summer of 2005.
Military officials on Wednesday night held a public meeting to discuss details of the plan to privatize base housing.
Col. Shelley Christian commands the 375th Mission Support Group at Scott. She says privatization will improve base housing much quicker than through the military system:
"If we can leverage private money to get that done faster, then everybody wins, to include our families and the communities that get the commercial business brought to their communities."