FORT BRAGG, North Carolina – One set of photographs, posted on Instagram, captures a grand, crimson-colored banquet hall at a 100-acre Irish estate with two 18th Century mansions. The owner has redecorated the residence in gilded mirrors and blue damask wallpaper with the help of a renowned interior designer and is having a personal golf course installed on the verdant grounds.

Another set of pictures, taken by tenants, shows homes across the Atlantic in North Carolina, Maryland and Louisiana, plagued by flooding, bursting pipes, mold blooms, collapsed ceilings, exposed lead paint and tap water as brown as tea.

The same man is behind all these dwellings.

Ireland’s historic Capard House is among the vacation properties owned by Rhode Island real estate developer John Picerne. He purchased the estate in 2015 after emerging as one of the largest private landlords on U.S. military bases. The others are the homes of his warrior-tenants, who pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year in rent to live in housing run by Corvias Group, Picerne’s closely held company.

Since 2002, Corvias has acquired control of more than 26,000 houses and apartments across 13 military bases. Picerne’s company runs this lucrative enterprise in partnership with the Army and Air Force through a program that enlists private-sector operators to build new dwellings, upgrade others, and manage the properties for 50 years.

The Corvias homes are among 206,000 now under private management in the 22-year-old U.S. Military Housing Privatization Initiative, the largest-ever corporate takeover of federal housing. The military says the effort has enhanced the lives of service members and their families.

Some of Corvias’ tenants strongly disagree. They accuse Picerne’s company of renting them poorly maintained homes riddled with health hazards that can trigger illness or childhood developmental delays.

Reporters visited three of the largest bases where Corvias operates and interviewed 30 current or recent residents who documented their battles with the landlord. At Fort Bragg, the largest military base in the United States, a tenant petition to “hold Corvias accountable” for neglecting homes has gained more than 2,000 signatures.

John Picerne declined to comment for this story. His company declined to address questions about its earnings or specific tenant complaints at its Army bases.

“While there are always several sides to a story, out of respect for our residents we will not comment on or communicate with our residents through Reuters,” William Culton Jr., the company’s general counsel, wrote in an email.

After Reuters detailed the findings of this article to the Army and Corvias, the company set up a phone hotline for tenants with complaints and pledged to respond within 24 hours. Kelly Douglas, a Corvias spokeswoman, said the company is launching a “comprehensive review” of its service request and resolution process.

“If there’s an area where we can improve or an unmet resident need, we want to make it better,” Douglas said.

Nearly a third of U.S. military families, some 700,000 people, live in rented accommodation on bases. Their living conditions have come into the spotlight since Reuters revealed lead poisoning risks in Army homes, mold and vermin infestations in Navy and Marine Corps housing, and sparse protections for tenants. Those reports have prompted Congress and the Department of Defense to order at least three investigations and to take measures to repair unsafe conditions.

Despite that new scrutiny, the finances of privatized military housing have remained hidden. The Pentagon has never disclosed the precise terms offered to developers and property managers such as Picerne, deeming them confidential business transactions.

Reuters has now learned how the arrangements work for one leading private developer, obtaining thousands of pages of proprietary documents that lay out the fees and responsibilities that Picerne’s business negotiated with the Army. These documents show that the landlord received iron-clad assurances of profit, often while putting up little initial cash of his own.

To grow his business, the scion of a wealthy Rhode Island real estate family has cultivated ties with military brass and politicians. Corvias has spent millions on lobbying, and Picerne has enlisted the help of his state’s powerful Democratic senator, Jack Reed, an Army veteran and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The profits have helped afford Picerne, 56, a yacht, private jet travel, and mansions renovated by celebrity decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard, known for his work with the Kardashian family and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger.

Reporters reviewed the confidential framework agreements between Corvias and the U.S. Army for six of the 13 military bases where the company operates. These agreements – hundreds of pages each, known as Community Development and Management Plans – laid out Corvias’ plans, responsibilities and projected earnings at bases.

From those six Army housing partnerships alone, Picerne’s business stood to collect more than $254 million in fees for construction, development and management of the homes during the first decade of the deals, a Reuters analysis of the terms showed. Over the projects’ 50-year duration, the fees were projected to top $1 billion. Nearly all of those fees are pure profit for Corvias, according to people familiar with the deals, because most of the projects’ expenses are covered by rent income from soldiers.

Corvias also stands to earn hundreds of millions more in equity returns, the agreements show: It can share with the Army any cash left over from rental revenues after the projects’ expenses have been covered. And Corvias gets additional fees from thousands of other homes it operates on six Air Force bases and one other Army post. Reuters was unable to review the operating agreements needed to analyze the profitability of those contracts.

The company has been able to enjoy these returns without taking on much risk. The government put hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of existing homes into the ventures. In all but one of the six Army projects Reuters reviewed, Corvias didn’t have to invest a penny in equity until around a decade later, and the company kicked in less than a fifth of the money the military contributed. The Corvias contributions correspond to about 3 percent of the projects’ planned development costs, which were largely funded by loans.

Corvias is shielded from risk in another way: It isn’t obligated to repay nearly $1.9 billion in bank loans its military housing projects have received. The loans – like the salaries of most Corvias workers on bases – are paid off from the housing rental stipends soldiers and airmen receive from the federal government.

The Army declined to comment on Corvias, the projects’ finances or specific tenant complaints. “The Army is committed to providing safe and secure housing for our soldiers and their families,” spokeswoman Colonel Kathleen Turner said in a statement. “We work daily with the privatized housing companies to ensure that residents’ concerns regarding their housing are addressed.”

Corvias said it is committed to quality housing for the troops. “Our core mission at Corvias is clear: put service members and their families first,” wrote spokeswoman Douglas. “That means providing a safe, comfortable home to those in the military who choose our housing.”

‘NIRVANA’ AT FORT MEADE

Maryland’s Fort George G. Meade, home to the secretive National Security Agency, is where Picerne laid the cornerstone of his military housing empire.

Like most of the Army’s family housing, the nearly 2,900 homes at Meade had fallen into disrepair under decades of government management. In official project documents from 2002, Corvias promised Meade families a better future. It would replace “obsolescent housing and catch-as-catch-can maintenance” with “a nirvana of planned Neighborhoods.” During a 10-year development phase, from 2002 to 2011, Corvias pledged to demolish all but a few hundred of the existing Meade homes and build 2,799 new ones.

Only 856 new homes were built, a nearly 70 percent reduction, Department of Defense figures show. The Army signed off on the skinnied-down target after the developer said construction costs had surged, revised plans from 2006 show.

The Corvias website features gleaming new homes at Meade and promises military families “upscale residential communities, all while saving you money.”

Some units fail to meet these promises. During an October visit to Meade, reporters saw some areas of handsome new and historic homes, but also others filled with eyesores and safety hazards.

“I bet he doesn’t have mold growing in those mansions.”

Reuters interviewed eight Meade families and reviewed photos and documents from several others. Among the problems in the homes were a ceiling that collapsed onto a child’s bed, roofs riddled with leaks, peeling lead paint, a wasp infestation, mold blooms, waterlogged drywall and a kitchen gas leak.

By the time she left a $2,500-a-month rental home at Fort Meade this year, Emily Swinarski was chronically ill, medical records show. A physician documented her shortness of breath, chest pain and mold allergies and blamed conditions in the home, built in 1959. When Corvias tested the air quality indoors, according to a copy of the results, it showed mold counts up to 350-fold the levels found outside.

Corvias found a partly rotted wooden roof was the likely source of the fungus, Swinarski said, but told her it wasn’t willing to conduct the extensive repairs needed to rid the home of mold.

Following her doctor’s written order to “remove herself” from the home, she and her Air Force major husband moved off post, throwing out nearly $5,000 in personal belongings – a tainted new bed, a sofa and a closet-full of reeking clothes.

“We chose to just bite the bullet,” she said.

Corvias’ development plan for Fort Meade said residents would be on a “first name basis” with maintenance personnel. Last year, citing tight budgets, Corvias reduced housing staff and shuttered at least one of its five neighborhood community centers at Meade. Residents say they are now referred to a call center to submit work requests.

Maintenance crews are pressured to quickly close residents’ work orders, a Corvias employee told one Meade family in October. The family made an audio recording of the conversation with the employee. Some staff, the worker is heard saying, refer to Meade as “Section 8 behind the gate” – a barbed reference to the U.S. federal system of housing projects for the poor. Corvias declined to comment.

In a Meade neighborhood where Picerne’s business pledged to build stylish new housing for officers, debris-strewn concrete foundation pads lie between two schools. An abandoned playground is overgrown with weeds.