by Reginald Rogers
Paraglide

Imagine transferring to a military post, finding the perfect rental home, signing your lease and preparing to enjoy life at the new location, only to be told that your rental property has been foreclosed and you’ll have to move again.

For most Soldiers, this would spell disaster, but here at Fort Bragg, procedures are in place to ease your worries.

As of last July, the Fort Bragg Transportation office has re-vamped its policy to allow Soldiers who face this situation to move to another location at the government’s expense.

“The move has to be within the 58 counties that Fort Bragg is responsible for,” explained Larry Hobbs of the Transportation office. “If the foreclosure occurs within those counties, then Fort Bragg would assist that Soldier.”

According to Transportation Chief Tim Shea, the state of the economy is the reason for the policy change.

“With all the foreclosures and what’s happening right now, it is something that has never happened before,” Hobbs said. “The key to the whole entitlement is that the servicemember has to be a renter or a leasee. It has to be that the landlord is getting foreclosed on before the entitlement can be used.”

Hobbs said the Fort Bragg community has experienced this situation on five or six occasions recently.

Shea pointed out that despite the thriving economy around the Fort Bragg area, mostly due to the fact that Soldiers return from deployments with disposable income, the Fayetteville housing market has not been hit like those of other cities.

“The process shouldn’t be different at Fort Bragg,” he said. “We already have a process for a local move, so we had to figure out how housing triggers the system. What we did was, we have a housing letter that comes from Housing that triggers ‘trans,’ that goes through our budget to do the local moves. Well took that same process, since it already works, and sat down with housing and made is so that the language specifically talks about foreclosures.”

He said his office was actually able to help a family in need using the newly revamped process.
“We had a family that was in need,” Shea said. “It was about 1600 hours on a Friday and they found out that the property they were renting would be foreclosed on the following Wednesday. Within 30 minutes, between Transportation, Housing and Budget, we satisfied their requirements so that they could take care of their son, who was a patient at Duke Medical Center.”

He pointed out that it was a major accomplishment for all the staffs, but it served as a model for the newly revised policy.

“It came full-circle on that particular foreclosure incident,” Goninan added.

Shea explained that the policy guidance states that the funding to take care of these types of situation is scheduled to come from the installation, but he added that it is unprogrammed.

“You don’t know when these instances are going to happen,” he said. “What I’ve done is sat with my budget and had these funds built into my spending. I actually have the language to read: foreclosures-local moves. Basically, we put so many dollars away, per month, from our annual budget, to cover that program.”

He said currently the funds are coming from the garrison budget, but he plans to ask that it be added to the Transportation directorate’s next fiscal year budget, just for foreclosures and local moves.

According to Goninan, they were able to help the Family because of the cooperation between the directorates and the quick approval process from the chain of command.

For Soldiers who feel they may be facing a similar situation, the Transportation office has identified some steps you should take.

“They should bring all of their paperwork, including the foreclosure notice, to prove that they are the renter and to also prove that the landlord is being foreclosed upon,” Hobbs said. “That information should be taken to the housing office and the housing office would, then, housing would produce the necessary letter to trigger the whole process.”

He said once the servicemember obtains the letter from housing, they should return to the Transportation office, which will then initiate the new move from that location to another location in the local area.”

He added that the Family is responsible for find the new location for the move.
Shea added that the Transportation office already had a contract in place for its local moves and that will be the company that actually performs the move for the servicemember and Family.

The group also pointed out that the new policy does not apply to recently retired Soldiers and it only applies to those who are active duty. Retired Soldiers are only allowed a single move to their destination of choice.