Limited barracks space and housing allowance restrictions often leave junior sailors living aboard ships even after returning to port.
The Navy has moved nearly half of its sailors who had been living aboard ships year-round into shore-based housing as part of the service’s broader effort to improve quality of life for junior enlisted service members.
The service’s “No Sailor Lives Afloat” initiative aims to end the long-standing practice of requiring many junior sailors to live aboard ships even when they are back in port. A lack of barracks space — and the law restricting the Navy’s ability to provide basic allowance for housing to junior sailors to live off base — often forces them to continue living on the ship after they come home from extended deployments.
“Sailors report to a ship, they spend at least 50% of that first assignment on a ship, and the last thing I want them to do when it comes back to port is not be able to leave the ship and have a home. I think it’s an antiquated idea. I’d like for people to live and work in different places,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told Fed Gov Today in December.
“Structurally, since the beginning of our Navy — and this really lands predominantly with our surface Navy — our aviation community and our submarine community and our information warfare community, no one else lives on board the platform in which they work every day. This is a young surface sailor problem. They deserve to have that separated. Imagine an eight- or nine-month deployment on board a ship, you get back to Norfolk or San Diego and your home is still on that ship. It’s just not right,” he added.
Caudle has vowed to being a “Sailors First” CNO since assuming the role last August. “Sailors First” is also the title of “C-note #1,” the first message Caudle sent to the fleet.
“I am unapologetically making sure sailors are first in my campaign,” Caudle said.
Under the “No Sailor Will Live Afloat” initiative, Caudle said the Navy would “invest in unaccompanied and family housing and use expanded BAH authority to ensure every sailor has access to clean, comfortable and safe housing.”
The Navy estimated that roughly 8,000 to 10,000 sailors were living on board ships while in port. As of February, about 4,500 of those sailors transitioned to shore-based housing.
The 2025 annual defense policy bill granted the Navy the ability to pay basic allowance for housing to all sailors below E-6.
“That’s been some great help from Congress, who has given me some expanded authorities to give basic allowance for housing to E-4s and E-3s — or whoever needs that. So as I bring sailors off the ship and put them into housing, I can move more sailors into the communities,” Caudle said. “Doing that is not as easy as I thought it would be, but the team working that is getting after it, and I’m not going to stop till that number zero.”
The Naval Installations Command has identified “several short-term and long-term projects across all major homeports” to expand availability of unaccompanied housing.
While some installations have enough housing available to move sailors quickly, large fleet concentration areas such as Norfolk, Virginia, and San Diego, California, are currently facing housing shortages. Overseas locations such as Japan also pose challenges that can slow efforts to move sailors ashore.
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