Military families across the country are sounding the alarm about toxic mold in base housing, an issue that has long been making service members and their families sick. PBS NewsHour featured firsthand accounts from three military spouses: Erica Thompson (Air National Guard, 22 years), Jenna Van Roekel (active duty, 9 years), and Deborah Rampona Oliver (Air Force, 24 years).
Van Roekel described how mold in her family’s on-base housing “caused our brand-new baby at 12 days old to go into SVT. Highest beats per minute were 306. And she had to have lifesaving care and an ambulance, a defibrillator and a NICU stay.” Oliver said she “started getting very, very sick” and ended up in the emergency room several times before her family ultimately decided to leave the military.
Rene Kladzyk, a senior investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, told PBS that housing advocates report mold is the number-one issue military families face, and an attorney specializing in military housing cases said roughly 90 percent of his cases involve mold. Today, 99 percent of military family housing is owned and operated by private companies. Kladzyk’s analysis found a nearly $7 billion maintenance backlog in military housing, which has more than quadrupled since 2017. The absence of a federal mold standard makes legal recourse even harder for affected families.
Published April 28, 2026 by PBS NewsHour. Read the full transcript or watch the segment.