A BAD SITUATION GETS WORSE

At her parents' home in Chicago, Meredith C. Marley has been searching online for two months, trying to find a two-bedroom house or apartment to rent somewhere near Fort Drum.

With her husband, Pfc. Jerry W., deployed to Afghanistan, she has been hoping to find something she can move into before he returns to the north country.

"I'm not going to get what I want," she said. "I know that ... He's not here to help with this. That's the hardest part."

The Marleys, who have an 8-month-old while she is expecting another child, are moving into a growing housing crunch around Fort Drum, one that is expected to get worse for military and civilian families.

Some 18,500 soldiers are assigned here and about 8,500 of them are deployed, according to 10th Mountain Division spokesman Maj. Frederick C. Harrell. If deployment cycles continue as planned, he said, Fort Drum might have all of its units home at the same time in the spring of 2012.

"We've never had them all here at one time due to deployments," said Fort Drum housing chief William L. Bamann, who deals with all soldiers living on and off post. "There's going to be a shortage of housing."

Without more construction, the influx will force more soldiers to settle for housing that doesn't meet federally mandated standards for service members, which includes living within 20 miles of their duty station, according Mr. Bamann. Also, the apartment shortage is allowing landlords to inflate rental prices for soldiers and civilians.

If all soldiers stationed at Fort Drum were back from deployment today, and their families came to live here, there would be a shortage of 1,700 adequate rental units within the 20-mile commute, he said.

From 2004 to 2005, the division added a third brigade, approximately 3,500 soldiers. But both the 1st and 2nd brigades were deployed to Iraq, Mr. Bamann said, so the increased number of soldiers "wasn't really that noticeable off post."

Today's biggest demand is for three-bedroom and larger homes, said Kevin J. Jordan, director of project development for the Development Authority of the North Country and a member of the Fort Drum Regional Liaison Organization Board of Directors.

"It's really how much the family population comes back to join the soldiers," he said. "That is what will create more of a housing demand."

But even the smallest of apartments are sought after, such as the $450-per-month studio offered online by Scott A. Gray, a Jefferson County legislator.

"Within less than an hour, I started getting floods of e-mails coming back," he said.

Soldiers offered to pay multiple months of rent upfront and one even tried bidding up the rent by $50, Mr. Gray said.

He settled with a renter for the posted price, he said.

Soldiers living in the local economy receive a Basic Allowance for Housing, which is $1,245 for a private with dependents.

The allowance increases with rank and is reviewed yearly. But the information doesn't go just to the military. When the Department of Defense releases the rates in December, landlords have access to the figures as well.

"Because our BAH is public, every time we get a raise, the landlords raise the rent," Mrs. Marley said.

Raising the rent for military members affects the rest of the community, according to E. Hartley Bonisteel, who writes grant applications for Neighbors of Watertown, an organization that helps people find affordable housing.

"It seems that there are apartments priced much higher than what we feel is reasonable," she said. "But it's a private market."

Her colleague, Melissa A. Warner, helps landlords rehabilitate substandard rental units into affordable housing.

"I don't think the market can handle that much more as far as rent increases," she said.

Mitigating the affects made to the local economy is housing on post.

Mountain Community Homes, a private company that oversees Fort Drum housing, has taken ownership of 2,270 pre-existing Army homes, Mr. Bamann said. Its parent company, Actus Lend Lease, is building and filling up 1,399 homes until early 2011.

"That's the end of our construction, unless the Army asks us to build more," Actus project director Joseph E. McLaughlin said.

Fort Drum will be able to house only about 35 percent of military families after construction ends, Mr. Bamann said.

"The other 6,500 or so families .... must find housing off post," he said, in addition to 800 single commissioned and noncommissioned officers.

"If there's not more housing added in the inventory, people will look for housing farther away or people will settle in with undesirable housing," he said.

The Army considers anything beyond a 20-mile commute inadequate, as does Mrs. Marley, who is on the waiting list for three apartments near post. A lot of ads online are misleading, she said.

"There are a lot of places that they say they are near Fort Drum and you look at it and it's 30, 40 miles away," she said.

Housing already is tight in Lewis County, where Cheryl L. Shenkle-O'Neill helps lower income people get housing as the associate director of Snowbelt Housing.

"There will be a real shortage around the area, and not just adjacent to Fort Drum," she said. "There is not enough housing now to accommodate the people we're trying to serve and it sounds like that situation is going to get even worse."

The Army will not be able to build all the required housing in the area.

"We need some more out-post developers to get some things going," Mr. Bamann said, but it's difficult for them to get credit today for future demand.

Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh., is expected to speak by telephone today with members of the Fort Drum Regional Liaison Organization about housing around the post.

Financing private development will be a main topic.

"We want to make sure there's enough credit available to facilitate the construction of homes or rental facilities," Mr. Owens said.

It is still feasible to build more on post, according to Mr. McLaughlin, whose company is wrapping up construction. If his company draws down its operations, it will take time to start it up again.

The latest construction took a year and a half to get going, he said.

"If the Army wanted us to do something, now is the time to do it," he said.