The Army is exploring alternative strategies to help improve the quality and availability of barracks for permanent party unaccompanied soldiers, and it needs a way to systematically compare the options to decide where, how, and how much to invest in barracks management. The authors help inform Army decisionmaking with a simulation-based approach to comparing housing strategies based on their costs and the quality improvements they might yield.

How Do Alternative Strategies for Army Installation Unaccompanied Housing Compare?

Ellen M. Pint, Anu Narayanan, Luke Muggy, Jonah Kushner, Beth E. Lachman, Sophia Charan

ResearchPublished Dec 10, 2024

The Army has set a goal that all unaccompanied soldiers who live in permanent party unaccompanied housing will reside in quality housing by fiscal year (FY) 2029. The Army's definition of quality includes private sleeping rooms, no more than two soldiers sharing a bathroom, and a building facility condition index (FCI) at or above 80. As of FY 2023, 19 percent of the Army's permanent party barracks had an FCI of less than 80, and there was a 15-percent deficit in available barracks bed spaces.

To meet its goal, the Army is exploring alternative strategies to help improve the quality and availability of barracks for permanent party unaccompanied soldiers, and it needs a way to systematically compare the options to decide where, how, and how much to invest in barracks management. In this report, the authors help inform Army decisionmaking by using a simulation-based approach to compare housing strategies based on their costs and the quality improvements they might yield. Model results should be regarded as suggestive of relative, versus precise, estimates of costs and benefits of options for reasons related to data quality.

Key Findings

  • None of the explored strategies for improving barracks quality dominates in terms of cost-effectiveness in achieving the Army's quality goals, and current funding levels for sustainment and restoration and modernization (R&M) cannot keep up with facility degradation over the long term.
  • Initiatives that increase the cost-effectiveness of existing spending (e.g., through intergovernmental support agreements or value engineering) have only marginal effects on the percentage of soldiers living in higher-quality barracks.
  • Military construction (MILCON) funding targeted at installations with deficits in barracks spaces can increase the percentage of soldiers housed in private bedrooms.
  • Relaxing unit integrity, with or without offering Basic Allowance for Housing to additional soldiers, could improve the percentage of soldiers housed in higher-quality barracks at a lower cost than the status quo.
  • Privatization options could provide enduring quality gains at selected installations.
  • Separately from the models, some literature suggests that barracks features (age and design) influence soldiers' behavioral health.

Recommendations

  • Improve data quality in the Real Property Plans and Analysis System, Enterprise Military Housing, the Installation Status Report, and BUILDER Sustainment Management System to better enable centralized decisionmaking about barracks strategies and future R&M and MILCON spending.
  • Where possible, consolidate soldiers into a smaller number of barracks buildings, reducing sustainment and R&M costs and potentially also reducing barracks deficits and requirements for MILCON.
  • Place soldiers in underused privatized family housing to reduce shared bedrooms and/or space deficits.
  • Privatize where it is cost-effective for both the Army and the privatization partner.
  • Consider barracks designs that promote socialization and provide amenities that soldiers desire to improve recruiting, retention, and behavioral and social health.
  • Pilot such initiatives as relaxing unit integrity, privatization, and assigning soldiers to vacant privatized family housing at selected installations to more accurately assess the costs and benefits of these strategies, account for implementation details, and better understand any cultural concerns associated with each of the explored strategies.

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Pint, Ellen M., Anu Narayanan, Luke Muggy, Jonah Kushner, Beth E. Lachman, and Sophia Charan, How Do Alternative Strategies for Army Installation Unaccompanied Housing Compare? Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2161-1.html.
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The research described in this report was sponsored by the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Installations, Energy and Environment) and conducted by the Forces and Logistics Program within the RAND Arroyo Center.

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