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Edited on Wed Feb-09-05 01:01 PM by BamaGirl
I can only address Army housing, btw. The Army puts a "value" on quarters that supposedly tells you how much you'd pay to rent the same thing off post. In our area that value is about $200 more than most local rent. That's immediately around post. A pretty large area is included in the hp area, and where I live costs much more than around post. Housing pay is based on pay grade and is taken from an average of the rents reported by surveys of military personnel in a given area. So what happens is, your housing pay is lousy so you rent a crappy little place so you can manage the rent, and the housing allowances are artificially kept low. Housing pay is supposed to cover a certain percentage of off post expenses (I don't remember the number), but that is supposed to gradually be increased so that in a few years it's close to 100%. As it stands for example, the Army says the quarters on post for my husband's pay grade are worth $850-900/mo, but housing pay for his grade is only about $550/mo. Reality is somewhere in the middle of these numbers. And of course, off post we pay utilities. So anyway, the on post "average" is overvalued and the off post reality is undervalued. None of this takes into consideration the condition of post housing either, which should affect value. If the Army was forced to factor that in, their post numbers would have to come way down. Sorry I wasn't more clear on this.
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