At a glance Military families face unique challenges when relocating to San Diego, but also have access to additional resources for housing, childcare and everyday costs.
Sticker shock
When Marjorie Jones-Bias found out she'd be moving to San Diego she did what everyone does — she started looking for a place to live.
The Army veteran is married to a U.S. Navy sailor. The pair have a young child and were excited to move to Southern California from Everett, Washington.
Jones-Bias knew San Diego from her father's time in the Navy. She thought they'd find a place in Pacific Beach or Mission Valley, she said.
"Each place was just really expensive," she said. "The rent was expensive and then we couldn't even fathom having to afford that and utilities."
The family decided to live in base housing and put in an application.
Housing assistance
Liberty Military Housing is a private company that partners with the Navy to provide base housing.
"We have waiting lists," said Philip Rizzo, the CEO of Liberty Military Housing. "They're a little more relative to where people want to live. So obviously the (Silver) Strand is a great example. People want to live in Coronado, so that has a very long wait list and and very low vacancy."
Jones-Bias and her family arrived in San Diego in August 2022 and moved into a hotel. They lived there almost five months while on the waitlist for military housing in Liberty Station.
Liberty Military Housing has between 8,500 and 9,000 homes in its communities throughout the county, Rizzo said. There are 7,000 more on Camp Pendleton.
Eligible service members receive a tax-free allowance every month to pay for housing and utilities. Basic Allowance for Housing, or BAH, varies based on the member's rank, whether they have dependents and where in the country they're stationed.
Jones-Bias' husband is an E-6 with at least one dependent so in San Diego, he's paid $4,404 per month in BAH.
The BAH amount used to be tied to the cost of living, Rizzo said, but about a decade ago Congress changed the rules. Now BAH is designed to meet 95% of an area's cost of living.
Liberty Military Housing charges rent based on the member's BAH — all utilities included. Someone who makes more BAH will pay more to live in base housing.
But it comes with other benefits, Rizzo said.
"We don't charge a deposit (and) we don't do a credit check," he said.
Jones-Bias is happy with their home in Liberty Station.
"We love it — for us it was the prime location," she said. "My husband is on sea duty so for me it was the safest bet because everything we need is within walking distance."
Childcare
About 1 in 3 military families said childcare was a top concern in a 2025 survey by Blue Star Families.
Childcare costs are high and a lot of military families live thousands of miles from their extended families, and all the support that comes with them.
"When you have family nearby, you can call them and say, 'Hey, mom, can you watch my child for quick second?'" said Cecilia Yacuta, who runs child and youth programs for Navy Region Southwest. "They don't have family nearby, so we are their family."
The Navy manages child development centers on military installations and licenses more than 60 home-based child care centers. Service members are eligible for subsidized child care that can save them thousands of dollars, she said.
"We base their fees on their total family income," Yacuta said. "Depending on how much they make is how much they're paying for childcare."
For service members on a military childcare wait list in San Diego, the Navy offers a fee subsidy to help them pay for civilian childcare.
Jones-Bias said the fee assistance program allowed their family to make things work when there wasn't room at the base Child Development Center.
"We could not get into the CDC," she said. "We tried, but ... the waitlist (was) extremely long."
Congress has steadily ramped-up support for childcare over the last several years.
Two new centers opened at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in the last few years and another new center is being built in Liberty Station, Yacuta said.
"Our waitlist has dropped tremendously — and not only because of the new facilities," she said. "But because of our fee assistance program as well."
She said the waitlist, which had 4,000 children on it in the summer of 2002, is down to a "few hundred."
Everyday costs
As other costs rise, Jones-Bias said they're adjusting accordingly.
"We are definitely more intentional about what we cook for dinner and what we have for snacks — we do a lot of planning" she said. "And we know what we're grabbing ... so that it doesn't go to waste, such as maybe an overabundance of milk or too many vegetables or fruit that will go bad before you have the opportunity to enjoy them."
Service members and some veterans have access to commissaries — base grocery stores. Jones-Bias said her family used to buy everything from the commissary, but now are more strategic in shopping.
"Since living in California we've actually started reading our ad papers," she said. "We use coupons. We go to Costco for things that we know we'll eat in a larger quantity so we're kind of a little bit everywhere. So we definitely had to switch some things up and try to pay attention to who sells what."
Half of the military families surveyed by Blue Star Families named military spouse employment as a top concern. Frequent relocations make it difficult to find and keep a job.
In 2022, Jones-Bias had recently left the Army and her military-connected job in Washington didn't transfer with her to San Diego. She now works for Yacuta at Navy Child and Youth Programs as a base school liaison.
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