Title: Military Service Members and Families Struggle with Housing in Increasingly Competitive Markets

Description: When military service members and their families move to a new base, they are subject to the whims of the housing markets they enter and leave. Trying to rent or buy a home when housing markets and competition are in flux can have a significant impact on military families' finances. 
In a new report, we looked at what the Department of Defense is doing to help military families navigate housing markets, which have become increasingly costly and competitive. We'll learn more from GAO's Alissa Czyz.

Related work: GAO-25-106208, Military Housing: DOD Should Address Critical Supply and Affordability Challenges for Service Members  

Released: October 2024

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[Alissa Czyz:] Service members have a lot on their plate. And they're dealing with a lot of stress. Finding affordable housing should not be one of those stressors.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report. Your source for fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs. It's no secret that military families move around a lot. In addition to navigating new school systems and communities, service members and their families are also subject to the whims of the housing markets they enter and leave. Trying to rent or buy a home when housing markets and competition are in flux can have a significant impact on military families' finances. In a new report, we looked at what the Department of Defense is doing to help military families navigate housing markets, which have become increasingly costly and competitive. Joining us to talk about this work is GAO's Alissa Czyz, an expert on defense policy. Thanks for joining us.

[Alissa Czyz:] Thanks for having me, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Alissa, some bases have housing on base and military service members get housing allowances too. Why is this an issue?

[Alissa Czyz:] You're right Holly. So most military installations do have some housing, but that housing is very limited. So the majority of service members have to rent or buy a home outside of a base. And the problem is that like the rest of the country, the housing market is tight in a lot of places. Supply is low and prices are high. So for service members, finding affordable housing outside of military bases is a challenge in many areas.

[Holly Hobbs:] But some of those challenges--the hot housing market, the low inventory, the high prices--that's affecting everyone. Are there challenges specific to service members? 

[Alissa Czyz:] There are. So unlike the rest of the population that gets to choose where they want to live, service members have very little choice in that. They also move around frequently. And they often have to move their families with them so they have some unique challenges where they have to look for housing more often in, sometimes in environments that they might not choose to live in.

[Holly Hobbs:] So our report kind of looked at housing supply and housing affordability. Is the Department of Defense also looking at those issues to see what they can do?

[Alissa Czyz:] Yes, DOD is trying to understand the housing situation. And they require the military services to each conduct housing-market analyses in different geographic locations. So that, in theory, would provide DOD some useful information about what's going on in various housing markets. The problem that we found in our report was that the services were not doing these on a consistent basis. And several of the analyses were outdated, some as much as 10 years. Right? So a lot has happened in 10 years with the housing market. So those really aren't good sources of information for DOD to get a true picture of what's going on. 

[Holly Hobbs:] What about the communities themselves? Are they working with the DOD, or is the DOD working with them?

[Alissa Czyz:] So DOD is reaching out to local government officials, and we did hear that in a lot of cases, there are strong relationships between the local community and the Department of Defense in various areas. The biggest complaint that we heard from the government officials, and we did a large survey of them across the country, was that there are frequent changes in DOD leadership at installations. So a commander may come in and establish a relationship with the community. But he's rotated in 2 years. And so they have to start over again with a new person. 

[Holly Hobbs:] Alissa, where is this problem the worst? 

[Alissa Czyz:] So it's interesting that, so in some locations, there really isn't a problem. Service members are able to find housing and their housing allowance will cover that. There are problems in areas that you might not expect, for example. So one of the key areas that we found was Key West in Florida. Actually, the services housing analyses showed that there were a large number of vacancies in rentals around the bases there. The problem was, though, is that they were vacation rentals. So landlords were not offering those properties for service members because they wanted to wait and get more money from the vacationers. So service members had a really hard time finding affordable housing in Key West. 

[Holly Hobbs:] It seems like it would be useful for the military to talk to military families themselves about the challenges. Are they doing that? And if they are, what are the families telling them or the service members telling them?

[Alissa Czyz:] So DOD is taking some steps to try to get some information about the housing situation. They do, do surveys of service members, but unfortunately, those surveys have been limited to those service members that live on base. So, they're not getting good information about the majority of service members who live off base. There is a DOD-wide survey that's conducted every year. That survey used to include a few questions about housing issues. DOD did remove those questions a few years ago to try to shorten the survey. And they also said at that time that housing wasn't a top priority for them to get feedback on. The good news is that DOD does plan to add those questions back on to the survey for this next round.
Congress did require them to do that. And they are taking action. So they should get more information after those questions are added. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So, we talked to service members for our report. What did they tell us?

[Alissa Czyz:] We conducted a number of focus groups at different installations. And some service members did not have any trouble finding affordable housing. They said that their housing allowance would cover, you know, the cost of quality housing for them. But we did find some significant issues that service members talked about. A lot of them said that housing allowance just really doesn't stretch to find affordable housing. That they had to use up their savings. They had to take on significant debt to be able to afford housing. Some of them had to choose housing that was far from where they were working on the base. You know, an hour-plus-long commute. Some of them had to leave families behind in other states so they couldn't move with their families. And then others knew folks that were taking second jobs to be able to afford housing. So a range of significant challenges that many service members were experiencing.

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[Holly Hobbs:] So Alissa just told us that the DOD recognizes service members and their families may struggle to find housing. But DOD doesn't always have the information it needs to help. Alissa, what more do we think the Department of Defense should be doing to help with housing?

[Alissa Czyz:] So we made six recommendations in our report, Holly. And the recommendations really get toward having good information about what the problem is. So requiring the military services to do those housing analyses at the required interval. Using that data to come up with a comprehensive list of areas where there are challenges. And then getting feedback from service members and families who are experiencing these issues--talking with the community, having good, you know, procedures for doing that. All of these steps will help the department make decisions to make things better for service members.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question what's the bottom line of this report?

[Alissa Czyz:] The bottom line is service members have a lot on their plate. They move around a lot and they're dealing with a lot of stress. Finding affordable housing should not be one of those stressors. So DOD really needs to do all it can do to help the service members find affordable housing.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was GAO's Alissa Czyz talking about our new report on military housing. Thanks for your time.

[Alissa Czyz:] Thank you.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. And make sure to leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at GAO.gov.