U.S. Rep. Hanabusa Leads Letter to Defense Officials Urging No Cuts to Troop Housing Benefits

Washington, D.C. – December 3, 2013 – (RealEstateRama) — U.S. Representative Colleen Hanabusa (HI-01), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, led a bipartisan group of colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, expressing their concern that the Department of Defense will reportedly recommend reducing the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) for our troops.

The Air Force Times reported that DoD may recommend cuts of 10 to 15 percent below the traditionally calculated BAH amount.

The letter says, “This program has worked well both for recruitment and retention and has become a cornerstone for strong community support.”

“This level of cut in the compensation package of volunteers is a serious blow to the standard of living we have held out for them. Changing this policy now, we feel, would undercut the commitment made to our troops in failing to care for them and their families as promised.

“In addition, such reductions would damage the ability of the public-private partnerships to reinvest in their military family housing portfolios, which have cleaned up what was 18 years ago, woefully substandard on-base housing and replaced it with well-kept and well maintained communities.

“All in all, an arbitrary cut of the BAH, replacing the market-based system, would put us right back where we were in 1996 when the GAO (Government Accountability Office) found so many houses substandard.”