The Military is Going Green, maybe.
There is this wonderful spirit of caring for the planet that is circling around the military. While I love going green, I think maybe military housing is using it though as an excuse to increase their profits. Military housing is now run by private companies and not our military organizations. It isn’t a fun accusation to make but let me explain. Over the last few years living on Fort Meade (Corvias Military Living)I have repeatedly seen families having issues with getting utility bills that seem excessive. If your a military family than chances are you know that when you live on post your full BAH goes to housing, this doesn’t matter if your in a 100 year old 4 bedroom house or new 2 bedroom apartment. What has changed though for most posts is that while before your BAH covered your basic utilities, now it might not.
They instituted a game (program) that puts everyone on a curve, the top of the curve are those who use the most energy, the bottom is for those who use the least. Rarely on Meade do people talk about getting back money though from under using utilities. What is more common are comments like this one from Maggie Eaton:
I have been doing experiments on my electricity usage since I moved here at fort meade and got my first bill. We have always been paying out of pocket .. So we even went out and got energy efficient washer&dryer , energy efficient curtains , lowering our usage. We were even gone (all but four days) of the month of September and we still fell in the higher side of the grace period?!!!! How if we weren’t even home! I would think we would fall below average. How are others getting checks or even falling with average? Why am I getting compared to vacationers or people with less bodies in their home? This is such a mystery to me! I’ve asking housing several times how I could lower my bill. They said curtains would help.. So I went to buy them .. And of course it didn’t help.. I called them again they came out and another maintenance man said “oh well maybe it’s because of the curtains.” I feel like I’m constantly being jerked around in this housing. I feel like since this housing is promised bodies in their homes that they do less of a job to help their residence. I also feel that BAH should cover BAH. I should t have to roast or freeze and not cook or clean or not take showers to fall in the average. Either people here on this base are just fricken dirty or something is a little quirky and I have to pay for it. P.s I used to love base housing until I moved here.
Another Military wife says this about her experience: I’m in an ADA house in new Potomac and just got our first electric bill, my hubs is a light hound, and we keep heat at 65 at night and 67-68 during the day and or bill was over $60! What are we supposed to do, we are already always cold. We moved into our house a couple days before thanksgiving so this bill is for December and we don’t ever put up Christmas lights so first I would think the curve was a little higher that month because many people around us had lights up and we didn’t! We lived on base at Hood and made money every month so I know we are very efficient… Our consumption is almost two times the base line, I just don’t understand how that can be, seeing as we are very efficient. And bc the bills are two months behind I’m sure the next two are going to be insane also.
Someone else shared their battle with military housing on Fort Meade: We had a huge problem, which we are still trying to resolve. After much investigating we realized we were supposed to have a gas hot water heater and had an electric. After much fighting with housing they sent out someone to do an energy audit. Not only did we not have the correct hot water heater, there was an element out. With the new water heater we are below on use age, when before we were 60-100 over every month.
Save Money, Unplug the Alarm clock!
Another wife said that housing told her to turn off the heat or AC during the day and to unplug everything but the fridge during the day, the alarm clock, the lamps, the tvs. They said even if they are not on they are raising the bill.
One must understand that many of these homes were built with poor insulation by the lowest bidder, one can only do so much.
I am sorry but I am a crunchy tree hugging green parent, I am used to doing things differently to be so but I think having to unplug lamps and alarm clocks is over the top. Part of the reason we are not planning to live on posts any more is because they do not take family size into account. They put a family of 3 into 4 bedroom houses who clearly use less energy for showers and washing clothing and dishes and such than my family of 6. While we try our best to make up for the footprint we are leaving being a large family we shouldn’t be compared to a 3 person family while they also take all the BAH. Plus, we homeschool, so we can’t just shut off all heat during the day! Some posts are better than others but I keep hearing bad things about Meade over the last few years.
I guess the thing that bothers me about their system is that they are getting money from someone every month, every month they make someone pay, those who are at the top of curve that month. So even if everyone is very very energy efficient they are still going to make someone pay.
The deck is stacked against military families, specially large ones.
I don’t want to play that game, specially seeing none of us can audit their system or numbers and where they are getting them from. I will not force my kids to be that cold or hot, wash bedding less often, give them less baths, just to try and match the family of 3 next door, it isn’t fair to them. I rather live off post and pay what ever bill we actually earn, not what ever bill housing energy game gives us when we can’t even see the deck we are playing with.
