Rent gouging :(

[blacksan]

Originally Posted by Vervepipes

To clear it up, I'm in the Canadian Air Force and they consider this town having no need of cost of living allowance, so I only get my salary and nothing else. Cold lake is a little shit town population 10,000 that has a glut of oilworkers willing to pay 400k on a house or 200k on a trailer so things are expensive here, maybe not LA expensive but not livable on my pay. I pay lease and a morgage because I own the home but not the land it's on so when taxes go up 35% like this year not only do my taxes go up, so does the lease. Our military housing isnt so great on this base: 50 year old 700 sq foot houses built with 2X4's that cost 350/month to heat

That sucks! I hate to hear CAF doesn't do a better job of caring for it's people. Not that this helps, but I worked with your Army when I was in the service and assumed they took pretty good care of service people up there.

[Vervepipes]

Generally they do, rent on base isnt too much (thats why I'm going back there) and many bases get good compensation for living in expensive areas, but I dont know when the last time they did an assessment... prices have doubled here in 2 years and taxes have gone up a lot as well. The also consider this place "semi-isolated" because it has a hospital but everything from groceries and building supplies still cost more than in the city 3 1/2 hours away

[Vervepipes]

It's not all bases that have bad housing, but this base was built 50 years ago and these houses are original to them. The forces housing has also been sold to a private firm and they seem to takes less care of them though