One woman worries about bathing her infant son in a tub pocked with mold and mildew. Another has a tree growing through her living room floor and flies landing in her shower and in her orange juice. A third fears her lone toilet is about to crash through the floor.

In the four months since Picerne Real Estate Group took over management of Fort Meade's housing as part of a $3 billion deal to privatize military housing nationwide, some residents say the Rhode Island company is far slower to fix maintenance problems than the Army ever was.

Many are angry that Picerne is adding amenities, such as miniblinds and ceiling fans, to vacant homes when longtime residents who ask for them are still waiting.

"I understand that they want to get these houses nice, but think about the people who live here now," said Kristi Osborne, a mother of two who is living on the base while her husband serves in Korea. "If my toilet's falling through the ceiling, why go to the vacant house next door and put down carpeting?"

Army officials maintain that Picerne is doing more maintenance work than the Army did when it managed the occupied homes, but they say their priority is to renovate vacant homes.

Picerne spokesman Bill Mulvey said the company is renovating base homes as quickly as it can - about 60 a week, according to the Army - so housing will be ready for families who live off post and want to move back. Mulvey said disgruntled residents should consider the plight of families who live off base on a military housing allowance of about $1,150 a month - a hardship in the pricey Washington suburbs.

"They're getting upgrades," Mulvey said of the base's residents. "But not the same upgrades under the same timing and under the same contract as the vacant houses."

The residents' complaints illustrate the challenge of carrying out Congress' mandate to turn over thousands of military homes nationwide to the private sector. Politicians and military officials have said the plan will upgrade base housing and save money, but it also forces military families to rely on profit-oriented private companies to maintain their homes.

The Army and Picerne acknowledge some bumps along the road to privatization. The Anne Arundel County base is among the first four nationwide to undertake the $3 billion Residential Communities Initiative, which Congress authorized in 1996.

Picerne, which had housing management experience but had done little work with governments, paired with Pittsburgh-based IT Group, a veteran government contractor, to win the Fort Meade bid last year. But by March, IT Group had sought bankruptcy protection and sold its interest in the deal to Picerne.

More recently, government regulators - including the Environmental Protection Agency, which placed the base on its list of hazardous sites in 1998 - have criticized the Army for rushing to close the Picerne deal in May and failing to disclose key environmental studies pertaining to ground-water contamination, landfill activity and solid waste.

In May, the Army transferred about 2,600 homes to Picerne under a 50-year land lease. Picerne will demolish the houses, most of which are about 50 years old, build ones with master bedrooms and carpeting, and manage the community. Construction is set to start next month and will cost about $400 million, which Picerne will finance through base housing allowances, or "rent," that it collects from residents.

It's better than when the Army managed housing and little money came back to the base, said Bruce Hopkins, Fort Meade deputy installation commander. Under the Army, half of Fort Meade's housing allowances paid for Army-wide housing; the rest paid for other functions throughout the Army.

"They are doing triple the amount of maintenance we could do ourselves," Hopkins said. "I would call that a tremendous success."

Picerne inherited more than 4,000 work orders from the Army's Department of Public Works when it took over housing maintenance in May. Each week, it receives about 600 more and has a backlog of nearly 1,000.

Picerne takes in about $2.2 million each month from the 1,949 occupied homes; it will make close to $700,000 more a month when families occupy the 551 vacant homes.

Mulvey acknowledges that residents "can look across the street and see an empty quarters with a ceiling fan, and they don't have one in the house."

"But once they move out" and leave the base, he added, "there's a whole list of things that we will do."

That doesn't sit well with many residents, who complained to Army officials at a community meeting on base this week. The Army closed the meeting to the public and declined The Sun's request to attend. Several who attended characterized the exchange as heated, with soldiers and spouses ticking off problems such as asbestos, smoking outlets and stoves that catch fire.

Angry residents showed Hopkins a vacant row of eight townhouses across the street from the home where the meeting took place. One of the units inside burned down several years ago. Pancake mix and a bin of noodles remain on the counters of a kitchen that's little more than a shell. In the next unit, Picerne workers recently installed ceiling fans, light fixtures and blinds, even though the living room floor is buckling and the kitchen's floor is unfinished.

Timothy Mallon, a civilian whose wife serves in the Army, has called Picerne numerous times about a tree bumping against his living room floorboards. He also has a fly infestation problem, which the Army attributes to a nearby sewer.

"When I cook, they fly into my pan," Maggie Mallon said. "They fly into the fridge. I close the door. They die in there."

The Mallons are moving Monday to another home on the base, but they say that's because Maggie Mallon's commander intervened and arranged the move. They know their neighbors aren't so lucky.

Several agreed to be interviewed on the condition that they not be identified. Base officials have told residents to report problems to the Army, not to the media. Some say they've told Army and Picerne officials about problems and called a commander's hot line but have gotten little response.

One female resident who has young children at her home said she waited several months for Picerne to paint over a back door where lead paint was chipping. Picerne said the door couldn't be replaced because it had no more doors.

Another resident bathes her infant in a small tub that she places in her bathtub because the tub has mildew, and her ceiling is covered with mold.

Osborne, who was chosen from the base's nearly 8,000 residents to cut the cake at Picerne's ground-breaking ceremony in June, said she might move her family back to West Virginia until her husband returns from overseas.

Mold and mildew problems, she said, are making her children ill, and her upstairs toilet appears ready to fall through the ceiling onto the first floor. When she called Picerne, she said, she was told someone would come and paint the ceiling crack.

Part of the problem may be dashed expectations, a result of Army promises that life would improve under a private concern. Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Jack Harrison, who works for the Military District of Washington and lives on Fort Meade, has lived on military bases for 22 years and said none has been perfect. But he likes Picerne - the company cuts the grass.

"I would give base housing an A," he said. And, Hopkins said, Fort Meade's soldiers will appreciate the changes.

"This is going to be the greatest thing that's ever happened to Army families," he said. "But there's a payoff for that, and that is the families that are in the houses today are not going to see all those benefits."