Military Community, Spouse and Family Resources - Military Times

No rules keeping small families out of larger military housing

If you’ve wondered about the way family housing is assigned under the new privatization agreements, you’re not alone.

An Army wife moving to Fort Bliss, Texas, wants to know why her family has to go on a waiting list for up to a year because they qualify only for a two-bedroom house, even though the post had vacant three-bedroom houses when they visited.

Because she and her husband, an E-5, have just one son, age 11, she was told they qualify only for a two-bedroom house — and there’s a waiting list of 10 to 12 months.

“My husband has served three tours in Iraq between 2004 and 2008,” she wrote to me. “Due to the waiting list, we will again be separated since our son and I will have to stay in Kentucky until housing becomes available.”

She said the policy is different at Fort Campbell, Ky. — if you qualify only for a two-bedroom home and no such houses are available, you can move into a three-bedroom home if one is vacant.

Defense officials say they don’t place restrictions on how many bedrooms a military family can have, and they encourage service officials to be flexible.

Similarly, there is no Army policy limiting a family to a certain number of bedrooms based on the number of children, said Ivan Bolden, chief of Army privatization.

Privatization companies have an incentive to keep occupancy as high as possible, which means more rent money coming in to fix, replace, maintain and manage the housing projects, Bolden said.

The system is set up to give larger houses to larger families first, but other families can move in if there are vacancies, Bolden said. At any installation, a privatization company could give you a four-bedroom home if it was available and a two-bedroom if it was not, he said.

The waiting list for two-bedroom houses at Fort Bliss is six to eight months, said Curt Savoy, the Army’s privatization program manager at that post.

Savoy said not all empty three-bedroom houses are available. If you drove through Fort Bliss as of this writing, you would have seen 89 empty three-bedroom houses. But 38 were awaiting renovation or repair, 20 were undergoing maintenance after a change of occupancy, and 31 were already assigned to incoming families.

A good Defense Department resource that can help pinpoint housing in the local community is the Automated Housing Referral Network, available at more than 150 military bases in all services and expected to be deployed at all continental U.S. bases by the end of the year.

As of May 28, the site had 179 apartments available within commuting distance of Fort Bliss, Savoy said, including 60 within an E-5’s housing allowance range.

“Families need more consistent guidance” so they know what to expect when hunting for housing, said Katie Savant of the National Military Family Association, who is exploring this issue.

She suggests families work with the government housing office on base as well as with privatization contractors.

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Staff writer Karen Jowers is the wife of a retired service member. E-mail her with questions or comments.