Most military service members live in housing provided by contractors. Just like the commercial housing world, the Defense Department has a supply shortage. Service members face high expenses such that they’re often forced to take on debt. The Government Accountability Office now urges DoD to use the tools it has available to get a better handle on the situation.  The Federal Drive with Tom Temin discussed more from the GAO’s director of strategic issues, Alissa Czyz.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin And you were looking at not so much the housing and the quality of the housing, which is another issue for DoD. But simply the supply and the economic impact the supply has on troops that are housed.

Alissa Czyz Right. So for this report, we looked at off base housing. So the majority of service members actually don’t live on a base, they live in the surrounding local community. So we were looking at the extent to which service members and their families faced challenges finding housing in local housing markets.

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Tom Temin And what did you find?

Alissa Czyz We found that while things vary by location, there are some significant challenges that service members do have when they are looking to rent or buy a home near a military base. We conducted some focus groups with service members at different locations across the country, and some of the things that we heard in terms of challenges were that their housing allowance, which each service member gets to cover the cost of housing. So it really doesn’t stretch into some of those tight housing markets. Supply is low, demand is high, and housing is very expensive. So as a result, service members had to take on significant debt in order to afford housing. Some of them had to run through all of their savings. Some of them had to make difficult decisions not to bring their family members to their next deployment because they couldn’t afford family housing off base. Some had to take on second jobs or commute long distances to their base as a result of not being able to find affordable housing.

Tom Temin Because you don’t think of military bases necessarily being in high rent areas, for example. It’s not like there’s a military base in Manhattan, and people have to find a house in Brooklyn or something, expensive housing. Could it be that the presence of a base or installation creates almost a captive market that landlords and housing purveyors take advantage of?

Alissa Czyz We did do some analysis and did find that the presence of the military does influence the housing market and it can make housing rents go higher in those markets. And then we found some unique circumstances. For example, one of the sites that we selected with Key West in Florida. And according to the military’s housing assessment, there should be a lot of rentals available in Key West. What was happening there when we dug behind that was that landlords were holding those rentals for vacationers so that they could get higher rents from the vacationers that were coming to that market. So while a lot of those properties sat vacant, they were not accessible to the service members who were deployed there.

Tom Temin Yeah. So the base is to housing as the water is to housing in Venice, for example. And so it does vary then quite a bit regionally besides Key West. What are some of the other high cost areas where this is a particular problem?

Alissa Czyz So we had about seven sites in our selection. And as you would expect, Hawaii was another one where it was challenging to find affordable housing. Mountain Home, Idaho was also one that you might not think about, but a lot of service members couldn’t find affordable housing near the base and had to do long commutes, sometimes in dangerous weather, to get to base there. And then we found other sites really weren’t experiencing this problem. So Fort Bliss or Camp Lejeune service members told us that their housing allowance pretty much covered the cost of their housing and they didn’t have significant challenges. But it really did vary by location.

Tom Temin We’re speaking with Alissa Czyz. She is the director of defense capabilities and management issues at the GAO. And in your report, you said that the Defense Department could do a little bit better assessing of the situation on route to maybe solving it. Tell us what you think they should do.

Alissa Czyz We think DoD just needs better information so that they can make some decisions and take actions to help service members. So, for example, each military service is required to do a housing assessment of the market in the areas where they have bases. What we found, though, were that many of those assessments were outdated. Some as many as ten years. So a lot has changed in the housing market in ten years. So having updated housing assessment, having a comprehensive list of critical housing areas, getting feedback from service members, because they really weren’t doing that either, They were only getting feedback from those that lived on bases that weren’t really asking service members about their experiences looking for off base housing. Having more information so they really understand the problem and the problem areas can help DoD take targeted actions to help service members.

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Tom Temin Right. A lot of this seems to fall on the assistant secretary of defense for energy installations and environment.

Alissa Czyz Correct. And what we found was that they did not have a holistic picture. So housing is sort of managed by installation. The commander may do some certain things in his local community, but DoD overall wasn’t having a good comprehensive picture of what was going on across the country and at different bases.

Tom Temin And if they were to get a comprehensive picture, what could they do with it? Because landlords are landlords.

Alissa Czyz So they could put out some guidance about how to better manage the situation. Some installations develop really good relationships with local communities. Those lead to rental partnership agreements and other things that can help service members. But having that information on what’s going on at various locations can really help DoD figure out what it needs to do.

Tom Temin It sounds like there’s a funny dynamic at a place you mentioned that it’s not such a problem like Camp Lejeune  for example, where pretty much it is a military community, whereas in a place like Key West, it’s a tourist community. And plus the locals that are fish or operate hotels and bars and restaurants, but it’s not a giant military situation. And where you have a community that is largely derivative of the military, you might have people that more willing to cut a break for military members because they’ve all been there. Very different situation than Key West. Am I on to something?

Alissa Czyz Well, we only looked at seven locations in our review, and each of them sort of have a unique story. So that in Key West just having those rentals only available to vacationers was a significant problem for those that were deployed there. There are unique circumstances in different local communities, and some of it is influenced by the local housing market as well. So DoD having a comprehensive look kind of across locations would help them target actions.

Tom Temin But it seems like there is a little bit of a theme there, because you mentioned Hawaii is high cost. I remember one time many years ago I went to Hawaii. The most expensive pineapple I’d ever seen in my life was in Hawaii, where they grow the darn things. Can’t even blame it on shipping costs. So it seems like where there is an economy outside of the military, that’s where you’re going to have more of a problem. But you’re saying you can’t really derive that from seven samples.

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Alissa Czyz Well, we did point out in the report that DoD does have a number of tools that it can use in various locations. They can use a cost of living adjustment and special pays in certain markets. They’re doing that to some extent, but they may want to look into kind of other options in some of these markets where it is very hard to find affordable housing.

Tom Temin Right, or at some point it takes congressional action to raise the basic housing allowance, though, correct?

Alissa Czyz Right. But DoD does do analysis and they use certain anchor points to figure out what that housing allowance should be, and they review that on a periodic basis. And they do have some other special pays available. So we did point out that there are some tools that they could use. There are leasing and other things also that they point out in their guidance are tools at their disposal. We found that they weren’t really looking at all of the available tools and seeing what they could do to help in some situations.

Tom Temin And by the way, what’s going on in Montana, which you said is a difficult place and they have to drive through difficult roads that might be snow laden. Andyou can run into bears on some of those roads. What’s going on in Montana? Is it Hollywood people buying ranches and taking up all the land?

Alissa Czyz Housing market where there’s low supply and service members do have to go far distances. And it is very treacherous as you said. We actually have a picture in the report, I think, of treacherous roadway in Idaho that service members had to use because they couldn’t find housing close to the base.

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