Military house

[Fullofquestions1]

Just wondering how military housing works
does everyone get offered a property?
is there a choice of property?
do they come furnished?
if you had a children while living there can you move to a bigger property?
do you pay rent/mortgage?

Just curious, if anyone can offer any answers please 🙏

I'm am army kid, living in army quarters up to late 80's.

The kitchen curtains were always the worst! Usually massive flowers all over them in bright green, yellow and orange.

All our quarters were furnished, really basic sofas, chairs etc. They were fine while you waiting for your own stuff to come.

We lived in Hong Kong for 2 years and the standard furniture was great! I don't think anyone bothered taking over their own sofas etc.

@DonnaHadDee Your family location and setup was much better than the British equivalant, you were very lucky to be at that base. We got to visit there before/after some camping trips. I had actually thought your mother was German who spoke excellent English ... rather than the other way around :)

We should be doing more for people in our armed services, especially those that commit for longer service times while support families. And better support when people leave too!

There are many elements provided to support accommodation when both in service and afterwards (which may or may not be taken up by people, and in different ways)

The different services have different general styles on postings for the service person and their family, historically the navy would obviously go on ships, and the family either stayed in their home town or in accommodation in their main port. The RAF were fairly similar
The army would move a lot - with families opting to relocate to each garrison or in their home town

The army has refined the way that it works, building up larger garrisons with less small
locations, and aiming to keep types of capability in proximity making it easier to have a stable home life in service accommodation

Peoples lives have also changed with the spouse having their own careers and may take more of the home town option with the service person doing weekly commuting

People also have different priorities on a private home, some will just take up SFA and spend or save the money saved by using subsidised accommodation, others may invest in property and either use it for the family or rent if out. It might be their intended future home, or it might be an investment to sell on before buying their future home
This is further encouraged with schemes such as ‘help to buy’
Trials include giving the ‘subsidy’ to the service person for them to choose their own accommodation instead of SFA

If you use SFA you are charged an amount of rent, but that is well below market rate. The subsidy is deemed to be the difference, but is also a hidden cost in managing the SFA - so an amount of money would be saved by not providing SFA.

Most of the SFA estate was sold to raise capital to restore standard after a lack of investment
This was the Annington Homes contract - the properties were sold and rented back. The government retained landlord maintenance responsibility, (and had sold at a price assuming the properties were up to standard - whxib they were not - the theory being that the capital raised would be spent on improving. If the MoD no longer required the properties they were handed to Annington (and probably paid a penalty for the lesser condition) but did not then pay rent and Annington would put them to development or sale etc

The Annington under market rent and maintenance costs are the subsidy that could be saved by not using SFA
(and there would not be a need for MoD to pay full market rent for a substitute house that they get a discounted rent back from the family - just give an allowance for them to choose a property to rent or buy

I live in US army housing in Germany. To answer the questions:

does everyone get offered a property? Married couples and soldiers with dependants will be given army housing. Single soldiers live in the barracks, unless they're quite high ranking.
is there a choice of property? We were given two choices; a flat on post and a house off post. It depends on availability though and it differs between bases.
do they come furnished? Very basic and ugly furniture, yes. Sofa, beds, dinner table and chairs, oven, fridge, washer and dryer. Fitted wardrobes in the bedrooms. Its loaner furniture so you're supposed to give it back after 3 months, but we've had ours for more than a year.
if you had a children while living there can you move to a bigger property? Yes. Housing is based on family size so if you have more children, you can request a bigger house.
do you pay rent/mortgage? No. Completely free, plus free heating, water and electricity. We only pay for our internet.

Maybe misread or its changed but I remember reading that the Forces are very strict over the houses/flats and furniture,
even a tiny mark on say a wall or sofa would result in large amounts of money in fines

There is policy for the charges for damages

In the past it was strict, and some of the people doing the inspection treated billing as a punishment.
I was managing the department running that for a region, and managed to find and stamp that out
Theres also the matter of the costs of raising a bill. For the services it’s typically a form that gets signed off, then back for processing and then to the pay office - and then maybe being called to the pay office because it’s not signed, before then being taken from pay
Paper forms were often sent to the wrong unit pay office when they were relocating - so even more expense and time moving bills around. So even a punishment bill was often too low to be worth the costs of processing it

Charges for damages are to cover the extra cost of repair/replacement.
If willful then you’re getting billed, but for fair wear and tear, minors etc you are not. Somewhere inbetween and you may be facing a proportioned bill in line with policy
(Or submit a complaint and get the bill cancelled, which basically told me who the problem staff were raising ‘punishment bills)

When in families SFA or singles SLA you pay a rental charge for the property, if you take SFA furniture as well (fully or part furnished) then you pay a contributory rental charge for it
You have paid for the use of that furniture, so general usage marks & wear are to be expected

@KnutonHardz As you probably have seen my stepmother and DF only ever spoke German together. She grew up speaking German and Polish at home, learned English at school and Hebrew of course. Her accents for all were noted as being perfect!

Also, you might like to read this (and there are a few pictures too). My brothers went back there a few years on a trip to Germany and stopped by for a look, etc. www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/27/there-was-a-lot-of-fear-how-heidelberg-changed-when-the-us-army-nato-left-town

I grew up in military accommodation (8 places in 13 years) until the late 80s. My parents were in a private rental when I was born as no accommodation on base. We were in flats when I was pre-school age. Not ideal. We packed in MFO boxes and parents had to pay to move our stuff so I was always having to give toys away (or my dad lied to declutter 😁). My parents chose to have their own sofas which cost them more in moving fees. The other furniture was the same wherever we went. I was constantly afraid of damaging something as we’d be charged at moving out inspection. I remember the mad cleaning and gardening prior to moving out only to move into grotty place with a jungle of a garden.

Very many years ago, I had a BF who went into the army, ending up as a Major General. Presumably had things worked out we would have had quite fancy living accommodation. I clearly missed out there. Maybe even nice curtains.

Me and my partner are expecting our first child in August so we are trying to be housed before this. Although because we aren’t married, proving you’re in a long term relationship is hard as we’ve only been together 10 months (it was a surprise pregnancy but we are very happy). There’s not really much advice on trying to get housed whilst pregnant. Whether we just go down the help to buy route through the army, we might get somewhere quicker? I’m just panicking slightly as we still aren’t living together and our baby is due in 7 weeks

Wasn't a lot of housing sold off in, I think, the 80s or 90s? I presume when lots of bases were shut down, what was the reason for that?
i know some housing was sold off for practically nothing, some left empty to fall into disrepair
Where I lived as a child, I know that police had housing as part of the job. Does anyone know how that worked?

@ScarletC
You clearly already know that establishing the validity of your relationship doesn’t meet the full guidance criteria as you have less than the one year, however that doesn’t necessarily rule you out. The casework email address in the link below allows for ‘exceptional circumstances’

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/established-long-term-relationship-status-for-service-personnel

Forces help to buy (subject to circumstances ) would in the longer term be ‘better’ as it sets you up for the future, as opposed to just SFA which is renting at subsidised prices

@amooseymoomum
A few points in your questions:

Police housing:
police forces may a similar ‘entitlement’ to housing for some of the police and can hold housing stock or rent from the private market.
Historically this could be a combined police station house such as for the village Bobby, but could also be a block of flats in the city for single constables

Historic sale of Defence housing:
Generally when a street full became surplus, either due to a change in the need or closing of a site. These would be advertised, often needed points criteria to be able to buy (ex services etc), and could have involved camping out to be in the queue to buy

Annington homes sale:
To raise funding to reinvest in the deteriorating housing a major sales of 57,000 properties took place which was coupled to a lease back
The properties were sold on the basis that they were in good serviceable condition (because that is what the money was to be spent on restoring them to such a condition)
As they were not in that condition the MoD retained responsibility for maintenance and therefore paid a discounted lease price below market rate.
Any houses no longer required by MoD get handed back to Annington and the lease payments stop - either the house is handed over in good condition or a compensation payment is made. Annington then do as they wish such as selling, renting or demolish & redevelop
In recent years houses have been bought back by the MoD which means