Lincoln Journal
Thursday, March 11, 2004

Hanscom housing goes to private sector

Citing a desire to provide military families with safe, high quality, and
affordable housing, Hanscom Air Force Base has joined the ranks of several
military bases throughout the United States, turning over the ownership,
development, renovation and maintenance of their family housing to the
private sector.

The Air Force recently announced that it has selected Hanscom Family
Housing, a wholly-owned company of CEI Investment Corporation and Shaw
Infrastructure Inc., as the apparent successful offeror that will plan,
design, develop, construct, own, operate, maintain, and manage a total of
784 military housing units at Hanscom AFB for a 50-year period.

"We are pleased that housing privatization is moving forward," said Col.
Darrell Jones, 56th Air Base Wing commander. "Our military families deserve
the best and that is what they are going to get. We believe they should have
quality housing available to them that is comparable to what is available in
the private sector."

Over the next few weeks, the Air Force is expected to finalize a lease
agreement with CEI/Shaw that includes developing new homes that will feature
flexible living spaces and state-of-the-art amenities more typically
associated with private-sector housing. The new homes will include three and
four bedroom units and will be ADA compliant. The new development also will
include community amenities and recreation facilities similar to those found
in many privately developed master-planned communities.

The new military housing at Hanscom is being developed under the Military
Housing Privatization Initiative, part of the 1996 National Defense
Authorization Act. Created to alleviate the poor housing conditions and
shortage of affordable housing available to military service members, the
MHPI allows the Department of Defense to work with the private sector to
develop, build, and renovate quality, affordable housing for the military.

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