A group of California-based Marines are again clearing out maintenance and repairing swaths of barracks and housing as part of the Corps’ Operation Clean Sweep.
Marines with 7th Engineer Support Battalion, 1st Marine Division used funds to conduct in-house repairs instead of hiring contractors to do basic maintenance on the facilities, according to a Marine release.
“There was a lot of help from everybody in the command when we first started to plan what was needed at first which cut down in delays with the work that needed to be done,” said Sgt. Martin Torres, 7th ESB barracks manager. “The whole battalion took a couple days off their schedule to come down to provide hands and people for Operation Clean Sweep.”
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Operation Clean Sweep has highlighted long-standing barracks problems and prioritized the need for ongoing improvements, according to the release.
Deferred maintenance and funding shortfalls have beleaguered Marine housing for decades. The conditions led to “wall-to-wall” inspections of the Corps’ more than 60,000 barracks rooms last year as Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith’s launched a barracks overhaul initiative.
The inspections found that half of all barracks rooms were “partially mission capable,” which means the rooms were deficient in at least one of the regulated living standards, Marine Corps Times previously reported.
As part of the initiative, the Corps will consolidate Marines in the better buildings and demolish the worse ones, hire professional barracks managers and increase funds for barracks restoration.
Assistant Commandant Gen. Christopher Mahoney previously said initial inspections were the “baseline” for understanding where the Corps should focus.
The “Barracks 360 Reset,” which includes Operation Clean Sweep, is a local initiative between I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps Installations-West to address immediate issues as the Corps works on its larger Barracks 2030 plan.
Barracks 360 seeks to address some low-level fixes by pairing experts in areas such as drywall repair, window screen replacement and air conditioning installation with Marine staff to make minor repairs.
I Marine Expeditionary Force and Marine Corps Installations-West are investing nearly $4.2 million in housing maintenance and repairs, as of 2024.
More than half of the funding was spent on a “surge” to clear backlogged maintenance. Remaining money was spent on air-conditioning units.
The Marines have also identified housing rights and responsibilities and minimum acceptable standards for barracks rooms in a “resident’s guide.”
“Marines now feel the barracks have become an actual home, transforming it from a ‘prison cell,’ as some described it, into a more comfortable space to look forward to after the workday is over,” Torres said.
Current plans call for 1st Marine Logistics Group to hold such clean sweeps twice a year, according to the release.
In October, Marines at Camp Pendleton, California held a two-week standdown to address barracks housing problems across the base, Marine Corps Times previously reported.
In a separate effort, the Corps rolled out the QSRMax system in July, which allows Marines to submit maintenance requests to USMCMax through a QR code on their phone. QSRMax then sends requests to barracks and building managers on the base, Marine Corps Times previously reported.
Marine housing conditions had deteriorated as the Corps prioritized spending on weapons and training over the past two decades during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“So, again, I can’t apologize for previous generations of Marines to prioritize training and equipping over quality of life,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said in May 2024. “But now the tide has to turn, and we have to get back to quality of life.”
A 2023 Government Accountability Office report found “mold, dysfunctional plumbing, and poor heating and cooling” in many Marine barracks.
As of 2024, an estimated 87,000 Marines live in barracks, Maj. Gen. David Maxwell, head of Marine Corps Installations Command, wrote in a Marine Corps Gazette article.
The article noted that 17% of the Corps’ 658 barracks buildings were listed as in “poor or failing condition.”
As of March 2023, an estimated 17,000 Marines, or 20%, lived in barracks that fell short of military standards regarding privacy and room configuration, according to the GAO report.
Recently, the Corps has spent an average of about $200 million annually for barracks maintenance.
The Corps requested $274 million in its fiscal 2025 budget to address barracks conditions, a $65 million increase over fiscal 2024. The service’s total fiscal 2025 budget was $53.7 billion.
An internal memo obtained by Marine Corps Times in 2024 showed that the service estimates it will need about $1.5 billion each year to bring all its barracks up to “good/fair” condition.
As of 2024, the Corps’ deferred maintenance amounted to more than $15.8 billion, according to Navy budget documents.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
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