KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Would you be willing to pay about $2,000 for a move if offered a house on base?
Officials with U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa recently surveyed military personnel living in the Kaiserslautern Military Community to gauge how important living on base was to them, and if they would be willing to finance a voluntary move to the base, a cost the U.S. government currently covers.
Officials are reviewing the results of the survey, which closed earlier this month and targeted personnel on the waiting list for base housing and those who had recently been on the list, said Col. Scott Jarvis, USAFE-AFAFRICA civil engineer.
The command is currently considering whether to require military personnel to pay for a voluntary move on base and to increase the minimum amount of time remaining in a member’s overseas assignment before they can move into base housing at government expense, according to military officials. Now the minimum to qualify for a voluntary move is six months prior to reassignment.
“We’re not looking to make any draconian changes,” Jarvis said, noting any adjustments would affect a small minority of the KMC population, of which about 75 percent lives in housing on the economy.
The policy review isn’t tied to current budget constraints but part of ongoing efforts to find ways to be more efficient and “good stewards of the taxpayers’ resources,” he said.
Housing on Kaiserslautern-area bases is in high demand: More than 780 applicants were on the waiting list for government housing on Ramstein Air Base, Vogelweh and Landstuhl, as of May 1, according to the Air Force’s online housing waiting list. The Air Force maintains about 1,800 government housing units in the KMC for military personnel, Jarvis said. The projected waiting time varies by a military member’s rank, desired location and housing unit size. The longest projected waiting time is 42 to 44 months, for senior noncommissioned officers requesting four-bedroom units on Ramstein.
Some families leave before an on-base unit opens up – and in some cases, families decide to remain off base when offered government housing, Jarvis said.
But many opt for the move when on-base housing becomes available.
“We’ve been a force that’s been deploying, a lot of family separations,” Jarvis said, “and we’re in an overseas foreign culture.” Sometimes military members want shorter commutes or parents want to be closer to schools while a spouse is deployed, he said.
In fiscal 2012, about 660 military families moved from off-base to on-base housing, Jarvis said. Some of those were government-directed, but most were voluntary, he said. The cost to move those families was “roughly in the million-dollar range.”
Air Force instruction authorizes the government to pay for one move from off base to on base if the member meets certain eligibility criteria, Jarvis said.
Jarvis wouldn’t say whether USAFE would have to seek a waiver for an exception to policy if it decided to make members pay for a voluntary move.
“I can’t speculate on what we may or may not do with the information out there,” he said.
