Mission Family: Reach out to families in different housing situations - Air Force Community, Air Force Spouse and Family Resources - Air Force Times

Mission Family: Reach out to families in different housing situations

An interesting finding popped up in a recent Rand Corp. study: Military families who live on installations and families that own their own homes have fewer difficulties during deployments than families who rent off-base housing.

Why? Is it financial well-being, support services, stability, safety, networks of friends going through the same experiences?

Or all of the above — and more?

The on-base difference could be that families are closer to the support services offered, said behavioral scientist Anita Chandra, lead author of the study. And renting could mean a period of transition, which could cause more stress, she said.

“My sense is that it’s the stability factor,” said Joyce Raezer of the nonprofit National Military Family Association, which commissioned the Rand study. “We know military spouses want to live on base during deployments.”

Raezer said the association asked Rand to ask in its next iteration of the survey more questions about the implications of living on base, and renting versus owning.

The initial interviews of children ages 11 to 17 and their nondeployed parent or primary caregiver were conducted in the summer of 2008. Two follow-up interviews were conducted with the same 1,507 families six months and a year later, and those results are being tabulated.

With privatized developers renovating or replacing dilapidated military housing, living on base is more pleasant now. Housing allowances also have improved, so families have more off-base housing options.

Yet housing officials are seeing a trend: Spouses are not moving with service members when they get orders to heavily deploying bases, said Joe Sikes, director of housing and competitive sourcing for the Defense Department. They may be staying behind for financial reasons related to their house or job, or they may be moving closer to their biological families for support as these long deployments drag on.

Further information about the link between living on base and the well-being of children will be of interest. But with the study showing that longer periods of parental deployment are linked to greater difficulties in children’s social and emotional functioning, should families think more seriously about living on base?

Should there be more base housing? Not every family will be able to live on base — or want to. Not every family will be able to buy a house.

Finding the best ways to reach out to families living outside the gates has been a decades-long struggle for defense and service officials, who are strengthening partnerships with organizations in communities across the country to help provide support services for those military families.

Should they do more?

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Karen Jowers is the spouse of a military retiree. E-mail her at kjowers@atpco.com.