Editor’s Note: This story was reported in partnership with POGO Investigates, the reporting division of the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight. The organization’s separate Policy and Government Affairs division has lobbied Congress to address the “federal enclave doctrine,” described in this story, and submitted an amicus brief in December to the Supreme Court related to Vinales v. AETC II Privatized Housing LLC, a case challenging the same doctrine.
Sarah Kline knew that door was going to hurt someone. Heavy and thick, the swinging door between the kitchen and living room was barely hanging on its hinges. A jagged piece of metal jutted out at the bottom. So she reached out to the landlord, Hunt Military Communities, a private company that runs military housing where her family lived on Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio, and asked to have it repaired. Then she reached out again. And again. “I’m having people over tonight. You can’t leave it like this,” she remembers telling a maintenance worker in October 2017. Still no one fixed it.
