With military housing costs skyrocketing, Democratic senators request Pentagon action
A group of lawmakers sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting that he looks into the higher rental costs faced by service members’ families.
During his 11 years as a Marine, Brenden Taylor and his family have moved several times. But when they left Okinawa, Japan, in 2022 for Camp Pendleton in Southern California, finding an affordable home to rent using his military housing allowance became an almost impossible challenge. Finally, they found something they could afford in Murietta, a 45-minute drive from the base.
Rising rents are a problem for many families. From 2021 to 2023, the median U.S. rent increased 25%, adjusted for inflation, according to research from the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. During the same period, renters’ median household incomes rose only 5%, the study found.
Rising costs are especially hard on active-duty service members’ families, who receive an allowance from the Defense Department to cover the costs of owning or renting privately managed housing. Although the department has increased the allowances in recent years, they remain insufficient for most active-duty families, according to a new survey conducted by Blue Star Families, a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 by military spouses.
Only 26% of active-duty families responding to the survey said the allowance covered their monthly housing costs last year; just four years earlier, 42% had said it covered their costs. Seventy percent of active-duty service members and their families live off base, the organization said.
Concerned about the price hikes, 15 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee, led by ranking member Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, want the Defense Department to investigate what’s driving them.
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