Analysis of the Need for Additional Family Housing at the Navy's Trident Submarine Base

Gao ID: CED-78-49 February 9, 1978

Congress has authorized the construction of 520 onbase new family housing units for the Trident submarine base in Bangor, Washington. The Department of Defense's (DOD) policy is to rely on community housing and to construct military housing only when it is impossible for the community to provide housing.

The 520 housing units requested for the Trident base are not needed because sufficient onbase housing has already been built or is under construction to take care of housing needs projected through September 1981. Projections indicate that the Navy will need only 268 onbase units in 1981. If the 520 units are built, the Navy will have a surplus of 935 units at Bangor in 1981. If the Navy assigns onbase housing on some basis other than need, as is done currently, the 683 units already built or under construction will not be used effectively. The estimated Government cost of building, operating, and maintaining the 520 units would exceed the cost of paying housing allowances to military families residing in the community. The effect on community assistance funding, if the Navy relied entirely on offbase housing, could not be analyzed with any confidence.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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