The Effect of Improving Quality of Life and Retention by Eliminating Public/Private Venture Out-of-Pocket Housing Expenses: The Differential Lease Payment Program at Naval Station Everett, WA

This is a NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A724663. The abstract provided by the Pentagon follows: This thesis examines the potential impact of eliminating out-of- pocket housing expenses on the quality of life and retention decisions of Navy families living in public/private venture housing. The Differential lease Payment (DLP) program, an experimental Department of Defense pilot project, is on the verge of implementation at Naval Station Everett, WA. The main research question and hypothesis is that removing out-of-pocket housing expenses will substantially improve quality of life and positively affect reenlistment decisions of the impacted military families. A written questionnaire was administered to 71 military members and spouses living at the Country Manor public/private venture housing complex, and 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted from the 71 person sample. The study revealed at the .01 level of confidence that eliminating out-of-pocket housing expenses will substantially improve quality of life and will likely have a positive effect on reenlistment decisions. A related finding is that eliminating out-of-pocket housing expenses, although important, is less important than improving retirement benefits in terms of motivating reenlistment decisions. Recommendations are to implement the DLP program as soon as possible; improve retirement benefits to maximize retention; and ensure measurement of customer (military family) satisfaction is inte al to all future public/private ventures.