Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Welcome Home is a Willing Warriors and the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run project. The program highlights activities at the Warrior Retreat and issues impacting all Veterans. For questions or feedback, please email us at podcast@willingwarriors.org.
Welcome Home - A Podcast for Veterans, About Veterans, By Veterans
Advocating for Affordable Military Housing Solutions
Unlock the challenges facing U.S. military service members in their pursuit of affordable housing with insights from our guest, Alissa Czyz, a Director at the Defense Capabilities and Management Section of the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO report titled Military Housing: DOD Should Address Critical Supply and Affordability Challenges for Service Members is the cornerstone of our discussion. With two-thirds of service members relying on off-base housing, often in expensive markets, Alissa sheds light on the financial burdens that disproportionately affect junior enlisted personnel. Our conversation unravels the reality of service members facing costly housing markets based on deployment orders, with disparities between locations like the budget-friendly Fort Bliss and the costly Key West.
Discover the ongoing efforts to address the military housing crisis, emphasizing the pivotal role of accurate data collection and the pressing need for Congressional oversight. As we explore potential solutions, the conversation underscores the continued need for direct engagement with the troops. Join us in extending heartfelt gratitude to Alissa and her team for their indispensable work.
Good morning. I'm your host, Larry Zilliox, Director of Culinary Services here at the Warrior Retreat at Bull Run, and this week our guest is Alissa Czyz. She's the Director of Defense Capabilities and Management Section Department not sure what it's officially called over at GAO and I asked her to join us this week because I ran across a report that they had done. I asked her to join us this week because I ran across a report that they had done titled Military Housing DOD Should Address Critical Supply and Affordability Challenges for Service Members, and I read through this report and I was really surprised. A number of things jumped out at me. So, Alissa, welcome to the podcast. I really appreciate you being here with us.
Alissa Czyz:Thank you, larry, thanks for having me.
Larry Zilliox:If you would, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be the department or the director head over there?
Alissa Czyz:Sure, so my name is Alyssa Sizz. I'm a director in our defense capabilities and management team at GAO. I have spent over 20 years at GAO auditing the Department of Defense as well as the intelligence community on a variety of issues, and so part of my body of work that I oversee is DOD military installations and housing, and that is how I came to lead this particular review that we'll be talking about today.
Larry Zilliox:Wow, and how long have you been at GAO? You said 20 years.
Alissa Czyz:Yep, I'm coming up on 21 years this month, wow.
Larry Zilliox:Well, that's awesome. Thank you for hanging in there, actually, because in reading the report I got to say there were points of it where I could almost feel the frustration and jump off the page. It can't be easy auditing DOD. I can't believe that that's an easy task. But I just wanted to highlight a couple of things from the report that jumped out at me and just actually read a few things here for our listeners and sort of level set and establish a baseline of kind of what we're talking about but right off the bat and what the GAO found section of the report.
Larry Zilliox:It says DOD does not use its housing assessments to identify a comprehensive list of areas where service members and their families are most severely affected by housing supply or affordability challenges. So I think our listeners will understand that affordable housing is a national crisis or situation. Almost 50% of those renters out there are cost burdened where they're paying more than 30% of their income for housing, either renting or leasing some sort of housing and it's surprising, but it's no different for the military. In fact, in some places it's worse. Some service members report having to take on debt or commute long distances to afford quality housing, and we'll talk about that and then a survey that you did in connection with this audit was there were 150 local government officials housing officials near military installations around the country that were surveyed and reported that they felt that the housing in their area was unaffordable, and I just really surprised at that.
Larry Zilliox:So two things that I think our listeners are not familiar with. One is that DOD relies on the private sector, which would be housing available to service members off of the installations for two-thirds of the service members out there. So only a third of military service members are actually housed on base number one. Number two is I didn't know this and I was really surprised is I didn't know this and I was really surprised. Since 1996, dod has been privatizing base housing and virtually all of it almost 100% of it is privately owned, which came as a shock to me. Can you talk a little bit about the burden that the lack of affordable housing puts on service members, especially junior enlisted today that you found as a result of your audit?
Alissa Czyz:Sure, thanks, larry. I'll unpack a little bit of that. You're right. So for this report, we focused on off-base housing, and the majority of service members do not live on base. They live off of a base nearby, and they get a housing allowance that they put toward either renting or buying a home. So this is the majority of folks here, and I think another point that you made that I want to underscore is housing affordability is not just a problem for DOD, it's a national issue here too, so housing prices have increased a lot during the COVID pandemic particularly. Supply is short, demand is high, and so a lot of us are feeling the pinch of high priced housing.
Alissa Czyz:Service members are no different. I think maybe, though, one of the differences is that service members are no different. I think maybe, though, one of the differences is that service members often don't get to choose where they live, so they are deployed to a certain location and then have to find affordable housing. So that was really the focus of our review and of what are the challenges that these service members are facing as they are looking for housing, and I want to underscore also that this was not a challenge at all locations that we visited, so we did a site selection. We looked at about seven installations and we did a survey. As you mentioned, in some locations like Fork, bliss and Camp Lejeune, service members were able to find affordable housing. According to folks in our focus groups, their housing allowance would allow them to be able to find something affordable and quality housing. In other areas, this was an extreme challenge for service members.
Larry Zilliox:Now, a lot of this is very similar to what our listeners may have heard about in resort areas. So I'm thinking Colorado, like Aspen, and places like that, where housing is just so expensive that the workforce is unable to live in close proximity to where they work. And some of these installations like Key West was highlighted where long-term rentals are just almost unheard of because landlords just don't want to commit to that because then they're missing out on seasonal rentals which they can just charge through the roof for. So what did you come up with as an answer to that? Where there just isn't, there's no housing on base, but then it's so hard to find housing off base, are these branches willing to pay more money or subsidize it in some way?
Alissa Czyz:Yeah, so that's an issue that came up in our review. We actually chose Key West as one of the sites we visited because, according to DOD data, there were a lot of vacancies in the area. So we thought this would be actually a good news story. But when we did talk with the folks at Key West, it's exactly what you said, larry, that there are vacant rentals outside of the base but landlords are not offering those for rent because they want to hold them for the vacationers and get more money. So Key West on paper looks like it's doing pretty well, but when you're going to dig down beneath the surface there, it's actually really a huge challenge to find affordable housing there.
Alissa Czyz:One of the bottom line of our report is that DOD really needs better information to find out what the real situation is at its various bases. So you referenced earlier that DOD is not using its housing assessments to have a comprehensive list of areas of critical housing. That's exactly what we found right. So each of the military services is required to do an assessment of each location and look at the housing market and various factors. They're required to do that assessment of each location and look at the housing market and various factors. They're required to do that at a certain interval.
Alissa Czyz:Our report found that a lot of those housing assessments were outdated. In some cases some of the bases had not done those. Some of the commanders at the bases had not done those in about 10 years. So a lot has changed in 10 years. So they don't have good information to be able to take action right. So first is just getting information, doing those housing assessments, coming up with a comprehensive list of where there are issues, where there are not issues, and then kind of targeting actions as needed. But you first have to start with good information.
Larry Zilliox:So I found in the report that it appears as though each branch uses its own sort of standards or metrics for measuring this, and my question is why isn't there a DOD standard that all branches use, so that the data is comparable amongst all branches? I don't understand why the DOD can't come up with something that everybody uses, so it's standardized.
Alissa Czyz:Right. So we did find also that the Office of Secretary of Defense really needs to strengthen their oversight across the services, so to come up with standard methodologies to help the services do these assessments in a consistent manner and then use those assessments and other information to kind of inform the department and have a holistic view of what's going on. So we did make a recommendation in that area, but really it's the Office of Secretary of Defense there's a chief housing officer for DOD who is responsible for this and they do need better information and consistency so they can get a holistic view.
Larry Zilliox:It looks as though the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 may address the issue of the length of time that varies between installations for when they're actually doing an assessment of housing in their local area, according to your report that the NDAA for 2023 requires these assessments to be done on every installation by 2027 and then within five years after that, so it looks like there's some sort of schedule that's been put in place by Congress. What's your sense of the faith you have in that actually being completed in that time frame?
Alissa Czyz:Yeah, congress did act because DOD was not doing consistent housing assessments according to its own guidance. So its own guidance said every four years. There was a little ambiguity with that guidance. Congress stepped in and said five years. Right now it's too soon to say they were late on a few things that they owed Congress with relation to housing. So we are following that. One of the recommendations we made is that DOD needs to update its own guidance to make sure that they are following that congressional requirement.
Larry Zilliox:I know there are service members that here we're talking too, by the way, of just CONUS assignments and installations we're not talking about internationally. Dod pretty much owns all the housing on its installations on bases overseas. But this is just here in the United States. They get on a list, you know, they get assigned, they travel to that base and they check in and check with the housing office and they get on a list for on-base housing and in the meantime they're forced to seek housing in the community.
Larry Zilliox:There are a number of service members that I know that don't take their families with them, and because their family's not with them, then you have a sergeant or a tech sergeant or someone senior enlisted going into the barracks and basically living in the barracks while their family stays at home because they can't afford it or they just don't have to pay out of their own pocket. Is there anything in the works that you know of that there's going to be some sort of increase in base housing allowance that will help service members defray these costs or offset these costs in certain areas?
Alissa Czyz:Right, larry. So we heard similar things with some service members in our focus groups too, some of the challenges that you mentioned of having to use up all of their savings or take on significant debt to be able to afford quality housing. Some of them had to live far from a base or commute long distances, and some did have to leave family members behind in other states because they couldn't find suitable housing that would house their entire family at an affordable level for them. Some of them had to take on second jobs or, you know, choose housing with lesser quality conditions as well.
Alissa Czyz:So, these are all very serious issues. Dod has a number of tools and we point this out in the report. There are challenges with each of the tools. They can look at leasing. They can look at different types of pays or increasing housing allowances in certain areas. They have different tools that they can look at. Really, kind of the central message, though, of our report is kind of going back to our earlier discussion.
Alissa Czyz:Dod needs good information to be able to make informed decisions. So they do do a survey, a tenant survey of satisfaction with housing, but that survey only goes to folks that are living on base. So you know the majority of service members live off base and they're not getting that information from the service members. The OD also does an annual status of forces survey. They used to include questions about housing in that survey. Several years ago they removed those questions to try to shorten the survey and also at that time housing wasn't a priority for them. They've since been required to add those questions back onto the survey. So they will get some more information there. If they start doing the housing assessments consistently and develop a comprehensive list of housing areas, these will all help inform, kind of what actions need to be taken. I will say you know the DOD officials that we spoke with take this issue very seriously. They want to make sure service members are taken care of, but our recommendations really go to having good information to be able to inform decisions.
Larry Zilliox:Well, that's great. I think in the end, our listeners probably know that it just comes down to money, that cost of living increases or COLA increases need to be done in these areas and, like you say, they just need to look a little bit to see where they're having these issues. It's not rocket science, really. What advice would you have for our listeners if they want to help bring awareness to this issue? Would the best thing be to just reach out to their representatives and ask them to press the issue?
Alissa Czyz:I think so, or talk to the service members too about their experiences. I think everybody wants you know. Service members have a lot on their plates, a lot of stress that they're dealing with. Finding affordable housing should not be one of those stressors. So everything that we can do to help the service members is important. Obviously, we point to the six recommendations we made in our report. You know we did this report for Congress and you know we know that the Congress takes this issue very seriously. Dod did concur with all of our recommendations. So we will continue to follow up with the department to ensure that they are taking actions to address the six recommendations.
Larry Zilliox:Wow, listeners, I think that's you know. That's going to be. The key here is follow up with your congressmen, congresswomen, senators, and say, hey, this is a problem and this is not fair. Service members shouldn't have to pay out of their own pocket to find a place where they can live just because there's a shortage of base housing. So, yes, reach out, and I'm going to have a link to the report in the show notes, so read it for yourself. It's 80 pages or so. It's really interesting work and I really appreciate the work that you all do. You know, without GAO, so much would never be understood about a number of things out there, and I think GAO doesn't get the credit that it deserves for the amount of work that you do on behalf of Congress and the American people for sure. I have one last question, and I ask this to a lot of different guests, but especially in your line of work how do you see AI contributing to what you do in the future?
Alissa Czyz:Well, I think that's a little bit outside the scope of this review too, but I think think there are a lot of potential benefits to AI if we are able to implement it responsibly. It could be a big help to us in terms of information gathering and that sort of thing, but it doesn't, you know, of course, replace the need for kind of what our bread and butter is. We get out on the ground and talk to folks, you know. Our teams go out to talk with service members, do focus groups, do surveys, you know, and try to uncover what is really going on and make recommendations for the Congress.
Larry Zilliox:Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it and thanks for all the great work that you all do.
Alissa Czyz:Great. Thank you, Larry. Thanks for having me.
Larry Zilliox:For our listeners. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can reach us at podcast at willingwarriorsorg. We'll have another episode next Monday morning at 0500. Until then, thanks for listening.
