- Business Spotlight
- Local Salute Offers Free Advertising To Active Duty Military Families
- To The Fallen Records - Giving A Voice to Military Artist
- Local Salute Blast
- 54th Military Police Co. “Dragon Maulers” Home From Iraq
- Local Salute Offers Free Advertising To Active Duty Military Families
DOD Moves to Protect Renters From Foreclosure
09/03/2008 - By By Karen Jowers - Staff writer Less than two weeks after it became law, a provision to pay for local household goods moves when a military renter’s landlord faces foreclosure is being implemented by defense officials.
Officials have sent advance notice to the services of a change that will be placed in the Joint Federal Travel Regulations in November, but is retroactive to July 30, when the Housing and Economy Recovery Act of 2008 was signed into law.
The change authorizes the military services to pay for a local household goods move when the service member or dependent is forced to move from rental housing because of a foreclosure against the landlord. It was approved Aug. 8 by Bill Carr, chairman of the Per Diem, Travel and Transportation Allowance Committee.
Read the memorandum announcing the change
The military services are developing specific guidance for their service members, defense officials said.
Officials advise service members or family members who are in this situation to contact their installation housing office or the member’s unit administrative/personnel office. Service members also can get information about renter’s rights at the installation legal assistance office.
The services had a head start on the issue. Defense officials had approved a similar provision through the chains of command, almost simultaneously with the signing of the law, because they believed they had authority to implement it under current law. That provision had not yet been incorporated into the regulations, and was superseded by the new change in law.
Information about the new law is being sent to legal assistance officers and executive officers in the services’ Judge Advocates General offices, said Army Col. Shawn Shumake, director of the office of legal policy for the undersecretary of defense for program integration. Through these administrative law channels, it will be sent to service transportation offices that handle household goods moves.
The change comes not a minute too soon for Army wife Annette Marlow, of Killeen, Texas. Eight months pregnant and mother to a 3-year-old, she is living in a house that is about to be foreclosed on. Her husband, an E-4, is on an unaccompanied tour to South Korea until next April. He is frustrated, she said, because right now he can do little besides worry. He expects to be home on leave for the birth of the baby.
Marlow learned the home was in foreclosure only after an appraiser came to the house July 31. She began scrambling to find a new place to live. But after having to pay rent for the entire month of August for her current house, along with utility bills, she said, “paying pro-rated rent for the new house also in August really slammed us.”
Still worried about being forced out of her house at any time, and wondering how she would pay for a household goods move, she visited her husband’s previous unit. They assured her they would provide the muscle to move her to her new home.
On Aug. 11, a lieutenant in the unit, the 4th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, told her about a Military Times article outlining the new provision in the law, and suggested that she call the base transportation office.
Previous article:
New law helps renters affected by foreclosure
Because the change had been approved so recently, the clerk in the transportation office was not aware of it. Marlow’s first conversation by phone with a clerk in the office reduced her to tears, she said.
The clerk “said there was no such thing, she had never heard of any law passed in regards [to] helping move when tenants are being forced out of foreclosed homes,” said Marlow. When she visited the transportation office in person on Aug. 12, the manager said he would look into it for her.
Information was not immediately available from Surface Deployment and Distribution Command officials about how they are spreading word about the new provision to transportation offices.
Marlow has made an appointment with the legal assistance office at Fort Hood to seek help. Although she does not legally have to leave her house without a court order under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act, she wants to get moved before her baby is born in mid-September, she said.
“I need to know my house is there for us to come back to,” she said. “I’ll have a newborn and a 3-year-old to take care of.”