Pay: Overseas Housing Allowance - Military Pay & Allowances - Military Times

Pay: Overseas Housing Allowance

About 44,000 people stationed overseas and living off base in about 430 locations receive the Overseas Housing Allowance, which is based on rental cost surveys generally conducted every six months and then adjusted throughout the year whenever foreign currency exchange rates fluctuate up or down by more than 5 percent. The Defense Department spends about $519 million per year on OHA.

OHA is a reimbursement allowance with three components. The largest component covers rent and is based on the amount of a member’s lease, up to an authorized ceiling for a given location. Ceilings are set at a level at which 80 percent of service members in a given location have their housing costs fully reimbursed.

The second OHA component is a “utility/recurring maintenance allowance” to defray expenses paid directly to utility companies. As with the rental cost ceilings, this allowance is set at a level at which 80 percent of service members are fully reimbursed for utilities costs.

The third OHA component, the Move-In Housing Allowance, has three pieces of its own:

• MIHA/Miscellaneous is a fixed-rate, lump-sum payment that reflects average expenditures to make dwellings habitable, such as installing supplemental heating equipment.

• MIHA/Rent is an actual dollar-for-dollar payment to cover one-time, nonrefundable rent-related charges customarily or legally required in a foreign country, such as rental agents’ fees.

• MIHA/Security can be paid to cover costs for security-related upgrades when housing must be modified to minimize exposure to terrorist or criminal threats.

For 2010 BAH rates, visit www.military times.com/money; click on “Pay Charts.” The link also has charts showing the percentage increases and decreases in BAH as of Jan. 1, 2010, for all paygrades in all locations.

The Defense Department maintains an Overseas Housing Allowance calculator at www.defensetravel.dod.mil/perdiem/oha form.html.