Foreign Service Housing, Part II

One of the most popular and widely-read posts I’ve ever published to this blog is the prequel to this post, Foreign Service Housing. If you haven’t checked it out, please do! There I shared photos and stories about our housing assignments during our first two diplomatic postings to Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2015-2017) and Canberra, Australia (2017-2019). I published the post over four years ago in May 2019, and it’s already been viewed over 6,100 times. What this tells me is people are very interested to see where FSOs live. I can tell you the fascination and curiosity about housing is the same even after you’re in the Foreign Service, too!

I have been meaning for literally a couple of years now to write a follow-up to that article, because since then, we’ve also been assigned to domestic Permanent Change of Station (PCS) Lodging during long-term Spanish language training in Arlington, Virginia (2019-2020) and to a consulate house for my tour in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (2020-2022).

We had more issues with each of those housing assignments than we’d ever had in Tashkent or Canberra, so perhaps I’ve delayed writing this post to avoid some of the bad memories. However, I’ve always strived in this blog to be as honest and balanced as possible about my experiences as an FSO, and I think it’s time to talk about housing when things aren’t as awesome. So let’s do it.

When we returned to the United States in July 2019 for home leave at the conclusion of our Australia tour, we were incredibly sad to have left our home and life “down under” behind. To be fair, it would have been hard for any place to really compete. We were already bracing ourselves for the transition from a sprawling ranch-style house with a giant yard nestled near a pine forest to a one-bedroom urban apartment.

We had decided, though, given our time in the DC area would be less than one year, it would make the most sense to let the Department assign us housing. That way, we wouldn’t have to fuss with a private landlord, setting up utilities, or seeking reimbursement each month for the rent payment; long-term training entitles an FSO to housing or a stipend whereas domestic assignments like the one I’m in now do not.

While on home leave, we were soon disappointed to learn two of our top three building choices we’d requested a year in advance had no vacancies and our third choice only had a ground floor unit available. We took a risk and decided to move into the PCS Lodging program’s newest building in the portfolio that no one had ever heard of, so excited were we to live in a brand-new apartment. What can go wrong? we asked ourselves.

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But our excitement turned to aggravation when numerous administrative and logistical misfires on the part of the building’s management complicated our move-in. Probably the biggest annoyance was the company’s inability to provide us with a specific apartment number in order for us to notify USPS of our new mailing address and begin rerouting our mail that was bouncing from Australia to California. Why not assign us an apartment, if an apartment exists? Why the ambiguity? It’s not like we would ever be more than two people; our entitlement to a one-bedroom was static.

Their insistence we confirm our precise arrival time for an in-person welcome was also a joke; we arrived with eight pieces of luggage at the agreed-upon time from a coast-to-coast flight only to find our keys in a lockbox and no one on-site. It appeared we were only the second or third set of tenants to have moved into this massive, empty building. We stood around with our friends feeling perplexed and searching for the apartment number in the long halls, sweaty and wheeling our bags behind us.

Once we got into the apartment, it was new and clean, and we felt relieved. But it didn’t take long to realize the setup wasn’t really done. The wifi instructions were missing, the televisions and bathroom fan kept turning on apropos of nothing, and our bed was missing a boxspring. They’d placed the mattress right on the carpet! The last straw for me was that the bed only had a nightstand and lamp on one side, a setup more appropriate to a teenager than a married couple.

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As my jet lag wore off, I realized the gym hadn’t opened up yet downstairs and was still under construction, although all the equipment appeared to be in place and plugged in. Apparently… it was a licensing issue and no one could be in there until the final county inspection occurred. Whatever. I went in and looked around and it was gorgeous and pristine.

In the lobby, mailboxes had not been assigned and none appeared to be locked; no key had been forthcoming. We were told USPS had to come and set things up. Oookay. This seemed confirmed when I attempted to enter our new address on the USPS Change of Address website, which garnered an “address not valid” error. Where the f are we? V and I asked each other. We were not amused. And unlike our other PCS moves, there was no embassy management section to help!

The concierge desk and office were draped in plastic and deserted, while hammering and pounding went on day and night throughout the building. I parked my car in the garage… wherever I wanted; the spots all officiously bore numbers yet none of them had been assigned. If my car gets towed so help me God, I thought.

We told ourselves the apartment was still great, and it mostly was. Slowly we managed to start resolving the issues one by one. But some of it took a lot of pestering. The building’s corporate representatives finally issued the few people who’d moved in a monthlong pass to a local gym after I kept pressuring and insisting the repeated delays in opening building amenities shouldn’t penalize the residents. They delivered us a boxspring and I could actually get in and out of the bed once it was off the floor. V had enjoyed the minimalist look of the low bed, but my spinal cord injury did not.

Eventually they also brought us a second nightstand, but I had to remind them repeatedly the Department had contracted them for a furnished apartment before a second lamp begrudgingly appeared.

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Eventually the mailroom operations also began to normalize, but I still had to file a complaint and publicly embarrass our building on social media after a cooler of medicine worth several thousand dollars was delivered and sat around with no notification to me. The contents were ruined. A cooler of steaks my dad sent met a similar fate and was graciously replaced by the company after I again insisted building management start taking the security of tenants’ mail seriously. I rallied support in the building to keep the pressure on and brought the situation to the attention of the Department, since the building was part of their PCS Lodging program and our stay was taxpayer-funded.

And of course, all of this stress was compounded by me starting a new full-time job with no time off, my husband V again being unemployed for the second time in two years, and the Department delivering my beloved VW out of government storage in Belgium totaled.

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But slowly we settled into the apartment and set about putting things into order. The small shipment we’d sent to storage in 2015 before departing for Tashkent arrived, and so did our 450 lbs of strategically selected air freight from Australia. The bulk of our remaining household effects had arrived to a warehouse in El Paso, Texas and were awaiting our arrival in Ciudad Juárez the following spring, so the apartment never felt crowded.

And then, March 2020 came, and the world shut down. My pre-departure tradecraft trainings were all cancelled or moved online, and while our arrival date in Juárez seemed more and more nebulous, the consulate notified us of our housing assignment. We started to daydream about having more space.

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V and I both came down with COVID for the first time, but didn’t know it for months until a blood test long before vaccines were available revealed the antibodies. We were supposed to go to Mexico in May, and then June, and then July. More bureaucratic issues ensued with the delay of my orders and having to extend our housing over and over again, often with little clarity whether we were going to be expected to move out with little notice to… where?

We passed day after day, week after week in isolation in our tiny apartment without so much as a pocket balcony. We cooked, we cleaned, we watched the news. We enjoyed each other’s company and the new, light-filled accommodations while we worried about the world and those less fortunate.

More than 40 days passed inside, and then two months, and then three months. Opening the front door still meant being “inside” with other people via the long hallway to the elevators and external door, back when we thought the virus would arrive on our groceries or mail. Of course I didn’t want to walk down the hall to the garbage chute! It was terrifying. We told ourselves a hundred times it would have been better to quarantine in our Canberra house. And that’s the flip side and one of the sad things about loving your housing: you always have to leave it.

Ultimately, we did get permission to head to Juárez and in July 2020 we packed out of the apartment. It was time to say goodbye again to a place that had simultaneously not felt welcoming and had been our reprieve, our safe shelter space, the only home we’d had for a year. We felt sad and happy to go at the same time – something I think every FSO can relate to. Whether it’s the devil you know, mustering up the energy to change everything yet again, or just feeling a little nostalgic for the good times – it always takes a toll. And maybe that is why we fight so hard to make everything function as it should, especially when everything is so transitory and we want to get some normalcy back.

In the end, there isn’t some future life where everything is more “real.” Our life is real in every moment and we don’t want to miss anything.

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We would have been much happier with our apartment if the management situation in our building would have been different. The location, appearance of the building, comfort of our apartment space, and everything else was great. I would even stay there again if I had any confidence that things have improved. But I’m not sure if I could get over the bad memories of being stuck in there afraid of the virus. And I’m not sure I could ever talk V into going back, because as irritated as I was, he was probably even more so, and has a better memory of the details of all the dumb things that transpired than I do!

But little did we know as we made our way towards Juárez that our next housing assignment would be our most difficult yet. To be continued…