Marines Fight the County’s High Cost of Housing
Lance Cpl. Paul Lewis gets $425 from the government for housing, but at Orange County’s inflated rental prices he can’t afford to live here. Not with a wife and three small children.
So Lewis, 22, rents a three-bedroom apartment for $550 a month in Riverside. He rises long before dawn each day and fights the freeway traffic to arrive at his job at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station by 7 a.m.
After work, he rushes to a job at a fast-food restaurant in Irvine, where he puts in another six hours. He arrives home close to midnight. Five hours later, the routine begins again.
1,200 Wait for Housing
Lewis, a parachute rigger, is but one of 1,200 Marines waiting to get into base housing at either El Toro or the Tustin helicopter bases. He has already waited 10 months and probably will wait much longer.
“It’s pretty hard. It really is,” the young Marine said.
In about three months, the Marines will open 264 new three- and four-bedroom housing units on the northwest corner of the Tustin base. And during the next few years, perhaps as many as 1,000 more units could be constructed.
But for the time being, the housing crunch at the two Marine facilities is severe.
Hal Wise, a civilian who has been in charge of housing at both bases for the past 12 years, may have the toughest job.
“He is also the least-liked person on base,” said Brig. Gen. D.E.P. Miller, commander of the El Toro base.
Wise said the current waiting list has been the norm for the past several years. In interviews, both he and Miller said that a Marine with a family can arrive here, place his name on a waiting list for base housing and complete his tour of duty before reaching the top of that list.
“We build housing but we are always behind. We’re playing catch-up all the time,” Wise said.
One reason is that the typical Marine has more dependents than in years past. Two years ago, according to a survey done at the time, the 198,000 Marines on active duty had 206,000 dependents.
About 60% of today’s Marines are married, more than double the number 25 or 30 years ago, Miller pointed out.
“It’s frightening for the Marine Corps,” Miller said. “We’re suppose to be a force in ready, so we must take care of the young Marine’s family. Stability is what keeps the guy in the Marine Corps.”
But affordable housing is particularly tough to find for a young Marine with a family and a military salary.
Since 1980, housing costs in the county have risen about 60%, according to a year-old study conducted by the Orange County Housing Authority. The study showed that almost half of the county’s residents rented, compared to only 37% in 1980. It also found that the cost of an efficiency apartment averaged about $450 a month, while three-bedroom apartments averaged about $850.
Also, the California Assn. of Realtors recently released figures that showed that resale value of single-family homes in Orange County had increased 12.7% from last year, up to $167,894. In the past two years, resale values of homes in the county have gained by 23%, the association added.
When Lewis moved his family here 10 months ago from Cherry Point, N.C., where he had been renting a house for $300 a month, he was astonished to find that his $874 monthly salary and $425 housing allowance were insufficient.
He said he found a three-bedroom apartment in Fullerton for $795 a month, plus utilities. (Base housing includes government-paid utilities.)
“That was the best I could do, but it would have taken about $1,700 just to move in. I couldn’t do it, so I figured I might as well make the long drive from Riverside,” he said.
Lewis, who has been a Marine for five years, said his salary and housing allowance are barely enough to support his family.
“Without my moonlighting job, we couldn’t save anything. We would just have enough for the bare necessities,” he said.
About 2,250 families live on the two Orange County Marine bases, Wise said. He added that at least 15% of the 4,800 Marine families who do not live in base housing reside outside the county because they can’t afford Orange County’s rental rates.
“A young Marine can’t afford the prices,” he said, “Enlisted or officer.”
Variable Housing Allowance
Because of the West Coast’s high cost of living, a variable housing allowance of between $205 and $410 is added to the basic allowance local Marines are alloted. Yet even a young first lieutenant can find it difficult to locate reasonable rental rates.
Lt. Darren Hargis has been in helicopter flight training at the Tustin air base for the past 10 months. Married with no children, Hargis rents a two-bedroom apartment in Tustin for $750 a month. He receives a little less than that in housing allowance but figures he pays another $100 a month out of his pocket for utilities.
Hargis, 26, said he was shocked to find that in Orange County he would have to dig into his own finances to pay the rent, even with $315 extra in housing allowance. At his last training site, Pensacola, Fla., he paid $280 a month for “a place on the water.”
Because Hargis and his wife, Sandra, are childless, the likelihood of their moving into base housing is remote. He is 17th on a list of 26 waiting for base quarters in his grade level, but only 40 two-bedroom units are available at that level. And turnover is especially slow.
In order to apply for a three- or four-bedroom unit, Hargis would have to have two or three children.
“My wife would have to get pregnant, have twins and then we still would have to adopt another,” he said. “Realistically, I don’t see getting in. I’d be dreaming if I thought that.”
Cpl. Thomas Curley, 23, has 6-year-old twin step-daughters and qualifies for a three-bedroom unit at the Tustin base. But he doesn’t figure to get one before his tour ends next February. He has been a helicopter mechanic there for the past two years. He makes $910 a month and receives $490 for housing, including the $215 variable housing allowance.
Only because his wife works as a secretary can Curley afford to pay the $725-a-month rent, plus utilities, for a two-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach.
“But I couldn’t do it if my wife didn’t work. There would be just no way,” he said.
Even for a stable, 15-year Marine veteran accustomed to having his family with him, Orange County offers little in the way of affordable housing.
Gunnery Sgt. Johnny T. Flynn, 32, paid $800 a month rent for a three-bedroom condominium in Lake Forest, but eight months ago the place was sold. Even at that seemingly reasonable price, he was digging close to $200 out of his pocket to augment his allowance for rent and utilities.
Flynn, a stocky, cheerful career Marine, could not find a comparable place when he was forced to move. Instead, he reluctantly chose to send his wife and three children home to Maysville, N.C., last November. He now lives in the barracks and has not seen his family since they left.
“We just couldn’t afford it, so we decided that it was best for her and the kids to go back,” he said.
Flynn said he hopes to be assigned base quarters before the summer is out. If that occurs, he will be lucky. He will have waited less than a year for housing, while most Marines stay on the waiting list for at least 18 months, and usually longer.
For Marine housing officials, simply building more units is not enough. Since 1980, 1,000 housing units have been constructed on the two bases. Miller, the El Toro commander, said that Orange County’s surge in population and development has greatly affected affordable housing for young Marines and deprived even high-ranking officers of the ability to purchase homes.
“This is the aftershock of what has happened in Orange County over the years. Rents are sky-high and the medium-size home now averages (more than) $150,000. This is an unusual place,” the general said.
In addition to the 264 units that will be completed in September, another 200 units are scheduled to be built in the next two years. Additionally, the U.S. House of Representatives last month approved an amendment by Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) that will allow the Navy to swap 137 acres of land it owns at Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley for two parcels of land owned by the county near the Tustin base, and permits the Marine Corps to construct additional housing there.
The Senate is expected to approve the action soon.
About 800 housing units eventually could be built on the two sites. One is a 24.2-acre parcel located on the northeast corner of the air base; the other is 16.8 acres on the southeast side of the base, paralleling the Peters Canyon Channel. But since all military projects must be approved in Washington, it could be years before the housing is built.
See for Themselves
To speed up the process, Miller continually invites military and civilian officials from the nation’s capital to visit the two local bases and see for themselves the critical need for additional housing.
“Our justification is strong. We can sell this program based on our need,” Miller said. “But even if everything would flow perfectly, it would take four years to build (the housing).”
Miller said that federal officials also are examining a program called Venture Capital, a new concept in housing that would allow the military to lease land at almost no cost to private developers who can then construct apartments.
Under that authority, the developer would build the apartments and the Marines would guarantee occupancy. The program should be enticing to local developers, especially since military-owned land outside the chain-linked fences at El Toro can fetch between $350,000 and $1.5 million an acre, Miller pointed out.
