As part of her plan for the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti says by 2027, the service will find housing for every sailor living on board a ship, who wants to live on shore.
“Given the competitive recruiting environment we face, we cannot afford to have a single sailor leave our Navy because we failed to provide for them. By 2027, we will eliminate involuntary living aboard ship in homeport,” said Franchetti, in the report.
In January, Master Chief of the Navy James Honea told Congress that the Navy cannot find housing for roughly 800 junior sailors living on board each aircraft carrier. The number does not include the other Navy ships.
“That's a number one, quality-of-life concern of our sailors currently on deployment,” Honea told Congress. “When we return from deployment, am I going to continue to live on this ship?”
The Navy also has at least 5,000 junior sailors living in substandard housing, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The Navy is already looking at significant changes in housing for young sailors in Hampton Roads.
In March, Leslie Gould, head of Navy Installations Command, told WHRO that the Navy is working on a plan to privatize all unaccompanied military housing in Hampton Roads. The service already has authority in San Diego and Norfolk to run pilot projects for what the Navy calls private-partner ventures, but Hampton Roads would be the largest privatization project for barracks in the military.
Privatizing all housing for junior sailors in Hampton Roads would cost $200-$400 million. The plan would be to have a proposal in the 2026 budget to take over the barracks at all bases in the area. Some facilities would be refurbished and new buildings would be built, said Gould, at the time.
The CNO Navigation Plan for 2024 is essentially the mission statement for the Navy. In the plan, the Navy also commits to having no first term sailor spend more than two years assigned to a vessel in the shipyard. There is also a commitment to have all Navy jobs filled at each level by 2027. The Navy made its recruiting goal for the year, after beginning the year with a 22,000 shortfall.
Aside from personnel issues, the CNO’s plan commits to ending delays in shipbuilding and maintenance by 2027, after years of being behind schedule. The Navy also wants to spend more of its budget on drones and other unmanned vehicles.
