Fort Belvoir's Residential Communities Initiative is on the verge of announcing the private sector developer partner that has been chosen to work along with Fort Belvoir and the RCI Team to bring post housing into the 21st century.
RCI, the Army's housing privatization program, is designed to improve the quality of life for military members by improving family housing. The program assists the Army in choosing and working with private developer partners to finance, design, construct, manage, operate, maintain and repair military family housing over a 50-year period.
In exchange, the developer partner receives the military members' basic allowance for housing.
The RCI concept began in the fall of 1999, as the Army was faced with a $6 billion backlog in construction and maintenance for Army family housing, 75 percent of which needed either renovation or total replacement.
Since then the first keys for new homes built under the program were turned over to soldiers and their families in November 2000, at Fort Carson, Colo. Along with Belvoir in this region, other Army installations scheduled for RCI programs are forts Detrick, Eustis, Hamilton, Monroe and Story, plus Picatinny Arsenal and Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
AT FORT BELVOIR, the construction of 379 new homes is planned, 1,916 homes will be replaced and 154 historic homes will be renovated. The end result will be new residential communities with neighborhood centers, a new modern living environment and high quality 3-,4-, and 5-bedroom spacious homes to satisfy the family housing shortage and housing needs of families.