Basic Allowance for Housing Resource Allocation: A Dependent-Based Model
Abstract
Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) is intended to cover 95 percent of a service member's housing costs, including rent and utilities. However, our research indicates that the assigned BAH at 35 percent of military sites is below the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) standards for adequacy. Furthermore, we found that the shortages and surpluses are normally distributed with a mean above zero. This finding implies that most sites experience a surplus, and that by bringing the tails closer to the mean, the problem could be alleviated. In this work, we focus on E4-and-below service members and wedevelop a dependent-based model to optimize BAH, maximizing the BAH over the rates set by HUD as standards of adequacy. The basic assertion is that service members should be able to afford housing at a standard that meets at least HUD levels of adequacy, and exceeds those standards if budgetary constraints allow for it. The data leveraged in this research suggests that this is very attainable, given some reasonable changes to the current BAH calculation methodology.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2023
- Accession Number
- AD1213143
Entities
People
- Aaron J Chamberlain
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School