Marine Corps News, news from Iraq - Marine Corps Times

SoCal Marines on PCA orders get bigger BAH

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Marines in San Diego who get orders to Camp Pendleton will cash in on the larger of the housing allowances for those regions, thanks to new guidelines released by the Corps in February.

For some, mostly officers, that will mean as much as an additional $77 a month they won’t have to forfeit when they leave their San Diego-based permanent duty station for permanent change-of-assignment orders to Pendleton, about an hour’s drive away.

Basic Allowance for Housing rates are based on the military housing area for the permanent duty station where the service member is assigned on permanent change-of-station orders. In Southern California, Marines generally are assigned either to the Camp Pendleton or San Diego military housing areas, the latter of which includes Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and San Diego-area recruiting stations.

Reverses previous waivers

In recent years, Marines on PCS orders to San Diego have received waivers allowing them to keep collecting the higher San Diego BAH when they later transferred to Camp Pendleton on PCA orders. But this year’s 2008 increases in BAH rates have pushed many Pendleton allowances higher than the San Diego rates.

So instead of collecting the now-lower San Diego rate, those Marines can get a new waiver for the now-higher Camp Pendleton rate. The latest revision was announced in a Corps-wide message, MarAdmin 126/08.

“We didn’t want to have the Marines suffer any kind of loss,” said Capt. Phillip Bonincontri, compensation policy chief at Manpower and Reserve Affairs in Quantico, Va. Otherwise, “we would approve a waiver for a lower BAH rate, which could contradict our policy.”

The latest changes help simplify the paperwork for Marines asking to cancel their original waivers, which are granted under existing policies.

“A lot of Marines were going to come back and cancel the [original] waivers,” Bonincontri said.

It’s unclear how many Marines will be eligible to retain the higher allowance, but one Marine official estimated the number as high as 800. Some eligible Marines have received letters or e-mails notifying them of the waivers.

One of them is Col. Art Corbett, a father of five children who lives in Encinitas, a coastal city roughly halfway between San Diego and Camp Pendleton.

Last year, Corbett got PCA orders and left his job as commander of the 12th Marine Corps District, which is headquartered at the San Diego recruit depot, to work at Camp Pendleton. He was able to keep collecting the higher San Diego-based allowance when he began his job at Pendleton, where he is the chief of staff for Marine Corps Installations-West.

Beginning March 15, he will receive the increased housing allowance for Camp Pendleton, which is now $2,722, instead of the $2,645 he had been collecting in San Diego BAH. That’s a difference of $77 a month.

“That’s more than I thought,” he said. With five kids at home, ages nine to 17, “it all counts.”

Marines and other service members stationed in the Camp Pendleton or San Diego areas are seeing larger housing allowances this year. “It’s good for a lot of folks,” Corbett said, noting the rising price of gas and long commutes that many Marines in the region must endure.

The monthly BAH payments are determined by the service member’s permanent duty station, not where he lives.

They are based on a survey of rents — not mortgages or home purchases — in each geographical location and are adjusted for the type or size of home, according to the Defense Department. Areas with a concentration of military installations, such as the San Diego region and the Washington beltway, usually have more than one set of BAH rates and military housing areas, since there’s no single “regional” rate.

Pendleton vs. San Diego BAH

Until recently, Marines and other service members permanently assigned to Camp Pendleton have collected monthly housing allowances that often were far less than the BAH paid to their peers at permanent duty stations in San Diego. For some ranks, the difference was several hundred dollars a month.

The 2008 BAH rates narrowed the gap in some paygrades, although for many service members who live in the San Diego region, PCS orders to San Diego still mean a larger housing allowance than PCS orders to Camp Pendleton.

A married corporal stationed at Camp Pendleton, for example, gets a monthly allowance of $1,554 this year — $266 less a month than a corporal stationed at MCAS Miramar or MCRD San Diego collects each month. That’s a difference of $3,192 a year, tax free.

For a sergeant, the difference is worth $146: In San Diego, he’ll collect $1,857 while his peers at Camp Pendleton get $1,711 a month, or $1,752 more a year.