For navy households stationed within the Pacific Northwest, an assigned base doesn’t usually double as residence. Most service members — roughly three in four at Joint-Base Lewis-McChord, the area’s largest set up — carry their households to dwell in surrounding communities. They face the identical sticker shock as anybody residing right here — however Congress has didn’t appropriately cowl housing prices in Western Washington, because it has elsewhere for women and men in uniform.
U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Tacoma, has been steadfast in shining a highlight on the housing burdens going through these within the navy. Almost 60% of navy households reported in 2023 paying $251 or extra above an allowance supplied by the Protection Division to cowl housing and utilities every month.
Till 2014, Congress funded the Base Allowance for Housing at 100% of native common prices. Members of Congress approved a reduction to 95% the following yr, the place it has remained. Strickland’s proposal for the 2025 Protection funds is to return it to full 100% funding, estimated to value $1.2 billion. That’s sufficient to “put a pair hundred {dollars} within the pockets of navy households every month,” she advised the editorial board.
Mounting residing prices don’t simply eat away at paychecks. They pressure service members to dwell farther from locations like JBLM, Naval Base Kitsap and different installations. These prices are a drag on morale, recruitment and the choice to hitch the armed forces within the first place — at a time when america can ill-afford to discourage navy service.
Worryingly, the numbers of service members more likely to advocate becoming a member of the navy to others is dropping precipitously. In 2016, greater than half of these within the navy advised Blue Star Families’ lifestyle survey they might advocate becoming a member of the armed forces; by 2022 that very same quantity had dropped to underneath a 3rd. The identical survey discovered that housing prices have grow to be a high 5 “navy life” difficulty.
From a perch on the Pacific Rim, present and future members of the armed companies primarily based right here will confront an escalating variety of international conflicts. The Bremerton-based USS Nimitz will soon deploy from the Northwest into any variety of potential sizzling spots — probably together with an precise capturing conflict between navies and the Iranian-backed Houthis off Yemen’s coast. Members of an all-volunteer pressure keen to struggle and defend america overseas don’t want the extra stress attributable to housing.
On this July 4, a day the place many People will replicate on the sacrifices made by those that’ve served their nation, members of Congress must also look ahead: How can present and future service members soldier on if they’ll’t afford to dwell in locations the place responsibility calls? Constructing extra housing on bases together with JBLM is required as nicely.
However within the close to time period, restoring navy members’ housing allowances to 100% is a vital funding precedence Congress should embrace in protection spending for 2025.