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New housing lets junior sailors move to shore

NORFOLK, Va. — The apartments are light and airy, furnished and clean. They feel like a generous college dormitory room, and that’s pretty much what they are.

And on last Friday, they officially became the home for some of the Navy’s most junior sailors.

Called Camp Elmore Manor Homes, the 120-apartment complex is one of the first of the Navy’s public-private housing projects for junior sailors, with other projects planned or under construction in other parts of Hampton Roads, San Diego and other areas.

It’s part of the Homeport Ashore program, a multi-year effort to give junior sailors a place to stay when their ship is in port. In Norfolk, the program also is refurbishing and managing existing barracks for 1,315 junior sailors.

The Norfolk building features two-sailor suites, each with a shared living room, dining area and kitchen. The complex will have a swimming pool, a basketball court, and, yes, a hot tub.

Seaman Apprentice Sammy Gonzalez, of the cruiser San Jacinto, is one of the first sailors to move in.

“I’d been on the ship for five months already,” Gonzalez said. “I really didn’t like it.”

Ships are noisy, and there’s no privacy. Any odd job that needs doing gets done by those too junior to rate a home away from the ship — E-1 to E-3, and E-4s with less than four years of service.

Now the 24-year-old from San Antonio lives like a college student, except he has been in the Navy for a year and four months and he’s already done a deployment.

From the outside, his apartment looks like condominiums found elsewhere in Norfolk. Inside, he has his own bedroom and bathroom. It opens to a living room and kitchen he shares with another sailor from the San Jacinto. The apartment keys are electronic swipe cards, which is how he also locks his bedroom.

He has lived in the unit for a month and will stay until San Jacinto deploys again in 2010.

“As soon as I heard about it, I put in my application,” he said. “Now I have somewhere to go after work.”

When construction is complete in January, there will be beds for 240 sailors in the development off Terminal Boulevard in Camp Elmore. Apartments for another 260 sailors will be finished by May in Newport News. And by March 2010, apartments for 1,867 sailors will open at Norfolk’s Camp Allen; 11 lucky sailors will get single-bedroom apartments in the project’s six-story building.

Gonzalez’s rent of $780 is paid through his “partial basic allowance for housing”; Congress authorized a higher rate of partial BAH, an allowance for those not entitled to regular BAH, if sailors live in bachelor housing under PPV pilot projects in Norfolk and other areas. He also doesn’t pay for utilities, cable or an Internet connection.

When Gonzalez deploys, he will give up the apartment, but his gear will be stored for free.

One of Gonzalez’s neighbors is Navy Diver 3rd Class Travis Wooden, 19, from Covington, Tenn. He works at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center. He has been in the Navy just 18 months and moved into the new housing from one of the barracks on base, where he shared a space the size of his current living room with two other sailors.

“It’s a lot better. You’ve got your own privacy. You can cook your own meals, so you save money,” he said. “It’s relaxed. It’s like living off-base.”

The sailors who live in these units have very little to worry about. The apartments come with linens and furniture, pots and pans and all appliances, including a washer and dryer. The property managers are retired Navy chiefs who call the sailors “shipmate” and remind them to come around for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner feed or free pizza. Guests can stay with a sailor for 14 days out of every 30. Male and female sailors live together in the buildings, but the apartments are single sex.

When the newest site is finished, there will be a game room and a lounge where the sailors can grab a quick free breakfast before work. Outside there will be a swimming pool, putting green, a basketball half-court, a picnic area with barbecues and, by late winter, a hot tub.

And the word is out.

“In the last three weeks, we have been inundated,” said Tom Weber, a retired master chief who’s now the director of operations for Homeport Hampton Roads.

In an effort to boost morale and retention, the Navy put up $37 million for the new construction, to which the developers, the Hunt Building Corp. and property managers American Campus Communities, added $330 million. That’s why it’s called a public-private venture.

The program was initiated by then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark.

“This was a glaring issue with our most junior enlisted personnel,” Clark said. “They lived on the ship, the most arduous duty we have. And if they the lived on the ship it’s almost like having duty everyday.”

Clark said it was also an issue of retention. “People are our most important resource, and we have to compete for them in the marketplace,” he said. “In my view, this is the right thing to do.”