That's the scandal: the Pentagon outsourced a duty of care to private landlords and never enforced the contracts meant to keep it intact. Outsourcing a duty of care doesn't outsource the duty. Congress created the Military Housing Privatization Initiative in 1996 to fix decrepit on-base housing without loading the capital cost onto the Pentagon's books. Balfour Beatty's $65 million penalty amounted to roughly one percent of the $6 billion in military housing assets the company reported managing at the time of its plea. Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management.