The Coast Guard stations people where the water is. A lot of that water is somewhere other people go on holiday, or somewhere almost nobody lives at all — and both are expensive in the same way, because there is nothing to rent.
The Government Accountability Office published a short document on September 18 gathering up what it has already found about this. It is three pages. It makes no new recommendations. That is the point of it: everything in it was already known, and none of it is fixed.
The shape of the problem
Around 41 percent of Coast Guard units are in remote or high vacation rental areas, where there is limited housing supply and high cost-of-living relative to the housing allowance.
That matters because most members are not in government quarters:
affordability and availability of private-sector housing, which 76 percent of Coast Guard service members rely upon
And because they keep moving:
Due to rising costs, Coast Guard service members, 40 percent of whom rotate to new duty stations annually, and their families find it increasingly difficult to access adequate housing.
Two in five members re-enter a rental market every year, three in four of them into the private market, and two in five of the units they report to are in places where that market barely exists.
What the Coast Guard has designated
As of 2026, the Coast Guard designated 46 areas affecting 400 out of 2,490 of the Coast Guard's family housing units across the United States.
Those are "critical housing areas," and the designation is what the service weighs when deciding whether to alter, acquire or build. The Coast Guard did this itself because the department that is supposed to has not:
Currently, DOD has limited information regarding which military housing areas, such as Coast Guard specific areas, have the most significant housing availability and affordability challenges, known as critical housing areas. Thus, there may be additional areas where service members are experiencing significant housing challenges that the Coast Guard and DOD are not aware of.
GAO recommended in 2024 that DOD build a comprehensive list. DOD issued interim guidance in March 2026 and, per this document, "plans to publish a list of such areas by May 2027" — three years after the recommendation.
Thirteen years without asking
The finding that is hardest to explain away:
While the Coast Guard has collected some information on housing-related issues, such as analyses of housing market data, it had not conducted a service-wide feedback survey since 2012.
A survey now exists — the Nationwide Housing Satisfaction Survey, developed in response to GAO's 2024 recommendation and launched in autumn 2025. The document does not treat that as the end of the matter:
However, the Coast Guard has yet to inform its housing policies with related current or complete information.
Who sets the allowance, and on what
The housing allowance is calculated by the Defense Department, for all services including the Coast Guard, from rental cost data on "anchor points" in approved market areas. GAO's assessment:
However, DOD has not always used complete information to set housing allowances. DOD policy states that remote and isolated areas may pose particular challenges. Yet, DOD does not routinely assess or maintain comprehensive information on its housing supply or home affordability in relation to service members.
Coast Guard officials themselves told GAO that "disparities in the housing allowance can exist, particularly in regions where multiple military housing areas cover large military service member populations, such as the San Francisco and Cape Cod areas" — one rate covering a very wide range of actual rents.
The authorities the Coast Guard does not have
The Defense Department has statutory housing tools the Coast Guard does not, such as the authority to enter multiyear utility service contracts. GAO recommended the Coast Guard assess ten of them. Progress, as stated:
As of June 2026, Coast Guard had submitted one legislative proposal to obtain one of these authorities and plans three additional proposals by the end of 2026.
One of ten, with three more promised.
Notably, the Coast Guard's own officials told GAO that some of the ten "would not be beneficial to the service and could result in large amounts of new direct spending" — specifically public-private partnerships. The assessment is producing answers in both directions.
What this document is, and is not
It is worth being precise, because the title invites a misreading. "Opportunities Remain" refers to recommendations already made and not yet implemented:
As of July 2026, there were nine open GAO recommendations focused on improving access to affordable housing for DOD and Coast Guard service members and their families.
Nine, across DOD and the Coast Guard together. This product:
- makes no new recommendations
- contains no agency response — no concurrence or non-concurrence from the Department of Homeland Security, because a synthesis has no agency comment process
- contains no new audit work
What it does not say
- Nothing about condition. No count of vacant or uninhabitable units, no maintenance backlog figure, no waiting-list length. The document does not use the words "vacant," "uninhabitable" or "backlog."
- No measure of the shortfall. It never states how far the allowance falls short of local rent anywhere, or how many members are in inadequate housing.
- No retention number. It says the difficulty "can affect morale and retention" and attaches no figure to either.
- No cost to fix, and no funding request.
- No deadline for the Coast Guard. The only forward dates are the agencies' own: DOD's May 2027 list, and three further legislative proposals "by the end of 2026."
The effects it does record are the ones members described: "increased commuting costs and distances, lower school quality, and limited access to health care services."