DOD's Unaccompanied Enlisted Personnel Housing--Better Living Conditions and Reduced Costs Possible

Gao ID: PLRD-82-59 April 30, 1982

In view of the large sums of money that the Department of Defense (DOD) is spending on housing its unaccompanied enlisted personnel, GAO evaluated the military services': (1) efforts to provide adequate housing; (2) efforts to control off-base housing costs; (3) computations of personnel housing requirements; and (4) personnel housing modernization policies, procedures, and practices.

GAO found opportunities for the military services to more efficiently use existing unaccompanied enlisted personnel housing assets, more accurately determine housing deficits, and control modernization costs. GAO believes that DOD can substantially reduce its off-base housing costs, as well as its construction and modernization costs, and at the same time provide better housing to its enlisted personnel. The services have not uniformly adopted or implemented the minimum standards of adequacy for housing and construction criteria which DOD has established. Seven of nine installations that GAO visited provided service members accommodations that were below the DOD minimum standards of adequacy. Some installations could have provided adequate facilities through better management and efficient utilization of enlisted personnel housing facilities. These housing costs could be further reduced by requiring installations to use underutilized facilities at other nearby installations and by constructing new facilities before modernizing existing ones. Nine installations which GAO visited overstated deficits in existing housing. GAO believes that four construction projects could either be eliminated or reduced in scope and that the Army and the Air Force are unnecessarily modernizing some facilities.

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.

Director: James G. Mitchell Team: General Accounting Office: General Government Division Phone: (202) 275-4128


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