The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2020 directed the Secretary of Defense to report on food insecurity among members of the armed forces and their dependents. The directive includes the following elements: an assessment of the current extent of food insecurity among not only service members and their dependents but also those living on post and presumably not receiving the basic allowance for housing (BAH); participation in food assistance programs; barriers to accessing this assistance; a description of other sources of income to meet basic needs; an assessment of the feasibility and advisability of a basic needs allowance (BNA) for low-income members; and three sets of recommendations (for policies, programs, and activities) to address food insecurity among military families. RAND researchers examined these elements and developed answers, along with listing areas requiring additional analysis.

Proposition HHH is a $1.2 billion bond fund for permanent supportive housing in Los Angeles. Evidence indicates that the inclusion of a project labor agreement affected both project size and construction costs of HHH-funded developments.

Homelessness is viewed by many as the most serious problem facing Los Angeles. Since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, there has been increased policy activity related to unsheltered homelessness. This has coincided with a lack of accurate data on the number and characteristics of unsheltered individuals due to the cancellation in early 2020 of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority's annual "point-in-time" count and demographic survey. More broadly, little is known about how the population of unsheltered individuals varies over shorter intervals, and there is a significant lack of information about individuals' housing needs and preferences and their experiences with county housing provision infrastructure. To better inform the development of effective homelessness policy, RAND researchers set out to determine the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness over the course of a year in selected areas of Los Angeles. The researchers conducted periodic counts of people, vehicles, tents, and makeshift shelters in Skid Row, Hollywood, Venice, and "Veterans Row"-areas with historically high concentrations of street homelessness or recent increases in street encampments. In addition, they conducted random surveys of a subsample of these individuals to collect data on demographics, past experiences with the housing system, and housing needs and preferences. In this report, the researchers present results from the first four months of fieldwork. They plan to continue conducting counts and will present the full study findings in a final report.

The authors provide information on how the fit between the Basic Allowance for Housing and area housing prices has evolved for Army personnel and the implications of that fit for the adequacy of housing for Army personnel.

Attempts by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to address persistent challenges with software development have been hampered by an inability to identify the many software professionals working within DoD's programs. In this report, the authors identify and characterize a subset of DoD's software workforce, the types of software developed within DoD, and the variety of methods DoD programs use when employing that workforce to develop software.

New York City's crisis of housing affordability has reached unprecedented levels. The ratio of median rent to median household income in New York City is the second highest among the 25 largest cities in the country. Additionally, the number of single adults experiencing homelessness in New York City has more than doubled in the past ten years. These conditions arose despite concentrated policy efforts at the state and local levels to control the growth of rents and increase the supply of means-tested affordable housing units. Fundamentally, existing state and local policies--particularly those limiting rent increases--largely do not address the root problem behind the city's affordability crisis: Housing production has not kept pace with the growing demand to live in New York City. In this report, the authors address the issue of housing affordability in New York City by focusing on the role that broadly expanding the supply of housing can play in increasing affordability. They propose six policy reforms for increasing production and estimate that if fully enacted, these policies could lead to approximately 300,000 additional units of housing relative to the status quo level of housing production.

This report documents research and analysis conducted as part of a project entitled Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Special and Incentive Pays in the Army, sponsored by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. The purpose of the project was to help the Army determine how to best increase incentives for higher performance among enlisted members and to more efficiently achieve Army retention objectives.

Rapid increases in inflation since 2020, a strong labor market, together with military recruiting struggles and reported food insecurity among military members, have put a spotlight on military compensation and on the foundational element of the compensation system, military basic pay. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2023 mandated a study of military basic pay, as does the charter of the 14th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, the White House-directed commission that studies military compensation. The Fourteenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation requested the RAND National Defense Research Institute to conduct such a study. In this report, the authors assess the basic pay tables of junior, midcareer, and senior enlisted personnel and commissioned officers; evaluate the Employment Cost Index (ECI) as a guide to the annual pay raise, as well as alternatives; compare military pay, measured by regular military compensation, with civilian earnings and evaluate the 70th percentile benchmark developed by the Ninth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation in 2002; and assess pay for service members in critical specialties and whether and how basic pay could be used to address personnel needs in these specialties. The authors also review recent trends in the civilian labor market that might affect recruiting and retention outcomes and the adequacy of military basic pay; develop proposals for change, drawing from past studies and commissions that have assessed military compensation; present findings from discussions with subject-matter experts and a review of relevant academic literature; and analyze pay, personnel, and civilian labor market data.

Every four years, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) commissions a review of the military compensation system. Since the 9th such commission reporting in 2002, the benchmark for setting the level of military pay has been at about the 70th percentile of earnings for similar civilians given the unusual demands and arduous nature of military service. The 70th percentile benchmark was based on analysis from the 1990s indicating that pay at around this level had historically been necessary to enable the military to recruit and retain the quality and quantity of personnel required. In addition, by law, the annual increase in military basic pay is guided by changes in the Employment Cost Index (ECI), a measure of the growth in private-sector employment costs; research from the early 1990s suggested that an alternative to the ECI, the Defense Employment Cost Index (DECI), would be more relevant to military personnel. The authors of this report provide input on the setting of the level of military pay, the relevance of the 70th percentile, and the use of the DECI versus the ECI in setting the annual adjustment to military pay. They find that current military pay may be too high, since recruit quality today exceeds DoD's stated requirements, and, further, quality and retention both exceed the levels observed during the late 1980s and mid-1990s, when the 70th percentile was established. However, the 70th percentile may be too low a benchmark, because there are reasons to believe that the recruiting environment is more difficult than it was in earlier periods. Figures of around the 75th to 80th percentile for enlisted personnel and of around the 75th percentile for officers are likely to meet existing recruit quality objectives. Assessing the ECI versus the DECI, the authors conclude DoD should consider replacing or supplanting the former with the latter. The DECI has several advantages over the ECI, and most of the critiques of the DECI have been addressed by advances in data availability and computing power in recent decades.

This annex provides data on the number of U.S. military veterans who experience financial burden from housing costs. It also offers context for how these estimates have changed over the course of the past 15 years.