As the Navy moves to expand its “No Sailor Lives Afloat” initiative first announced last year, a top leader in personnel policy described the effort as part of a larger push to keep sailors by ensuring their quality-of-life expectations are being met.
On Thursday, the service announced it had to date resituated 4,500 sailors who’d been living afloat to shore-based housing, and was working to expand housing access to more troops.
While details in the announcement were sparse, officials said Naval Installations Command had identified “several short-term and long-term projects across all major homeports” so unaccompanied sailors would have more access to shore-based berthing.
“These efforts include improving conditions in current barracks, bringing additional rooms back online through additional investments, expanding [public-private venture] options, exploring innovative housing solutions, providing temporary lodging when needed and advocating for an increase to the Basic Allowance for Housing,” officials said in a release.
BAH, an allowance that’s set across the military and factors in a service member’s location, time in service and dependents, is congressionally supervised and typically updated once per year, in the National Defense Authorization Act. It’s not yet clear what kind of additional augmentation the Navy might ask for to provide ship-based sailors with greater options to afford off-base housing.
In 2024, the Navy authorized sailors to collect BAH based on their dependents’ living locations, offering flexibility to pay for shore-based housing to some sailors assigned to ships who might not otherwise qualify. In his “C-Note” to the fleet announcing the “No Sailor Lives Afloat” program last September, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle cited this change specifically as a way to get more sailors into “clean, comfortable and safe” housing.
According to Rear Adm. Jennifer Couture, the Navy’s director of military personnel plans and policy, the focus behind the changes is adapting to the expectations of a younger generation of sailors with different quality-of-life standards and ideas about what a career of service should look like.
“When I first joined the Navy, E-4 and below lived on ships; that’s just the way it was,” Couture told Navy Times in an exclusive interview earlier this month. “Everything you owned fit in a seabag or it was contained in your locker on the ship. And we recognize that that’s just not good enough anymore. The quality-of-life expectations are higher, and we owe our sailors that.”
“No Sailors Lives Afloat” is one of a number of retention-focused initiatives under consideration by the Navy, Couture said, in recognition that the “top-talented people” the service wants to recruit have other attractive career options and the Navy must compete for their interest and commitment.
“We need to make sure that we are also signaling that, not only do we have a high purpose — which we have in spades — we have a mission … that continues to guarantee the prosperity of the United States, but also we’re investing in you as a future leader of the organization,” Couture said.
Caudle has also directed the Navy installations to improve cell service and install free Wi-Fi in all barracks, an effort that parallels Navy moves to do the same onboard deployed ships. No deadline has been announced for the Wi-Fi and cell service project.
“When our ships are in port, our sailors should be able to rest, recover, and reconnect in safe and modern housing ashore,” Caudle said in a statement with Thursday’s announcement. “As part of the holistic Total Sailor–Fit to Fight effort, this initiative ensures we are investing in the wellbeing of our people with the same seriousness that we invest in our platforms and capabilities — because a ready Navy begins with ready sailors.”