Provision of Quarters.

[JohnKelly]

I noticed that in a Post on Salary Comparisons by a member of the NYPD, reference was made to the cost of living factor in major US cities.

I guess the cost of living factor in major cities throughout the world is a problem for all Police Officers who work and live in that city. Although I don't think it is a problem in Australia, except perhaps for Sydney.

My understanding is that in the UK, some Police Forces provide Married Quarters and in London, the City of London Police provides single accommodation for officers, these are called Section Houses. I'm not sure if the Metropolitan Police provide Section Houses.

In Australia many of the country police stations have a married quarter attached to the Station but to my knowledge there is no provison for single accommodation.

What is the situation in your country in relation to the provision by your Department of living accommodation for married/single officers?

Cheers,

JohnKelly
Australia

[PeteBroccolo]

We have barracks at our Training Academy - one building has 11 dorms with 32 beds in each dorm, another building has several dorm rooms, varying from 1, 2, 6 and 10 beds each, and a 3rd building that has 300+ single rooms. There are also several single family and duplex houses around the base.

The separate houses are for the Commanding Officer of the Academy, Commanding Officer of my Division and some of the other ranking Officers at the Academy and my Division. The duplexes are for some of the Academy staff. The building with the large dorms are for troops that have not reached the half-way point of Basic Cadet Training, whereas the smaller dorms are for troops that are on the last half of training. The single dorms are usually saved for our experienced members, or members of outside Police Services, attending for in-service training courses or meetings. One side of that building has very sparse rooms - single bed, no carpeting; the other is more like a medium grade motel, but each room has a private bathroom. The large dorms have a common washroom each, although unlike movies I have seen of US Military barracks, we HAVE cubicles around our toilets - they do, however, have common shower rooms!

Barrack accomodation at the Training Academy is provided free for Cadets, and each Division or Agency pays for the rooms during in-service training.

I BELIEVE (never having been posted to those areas) that ALL postings in the 3 Arctic Territories have RCMP-, or Government-, owned accomodations, for which you pay by pay-roll deduction, although some places are large enough that some members actually do own their own homes. Normally, when you are posted to the Territories, your house hold effects (HHE) - beds, major appliances, furniture - are held in storage in the South, paid for by the RCMP, and you move into fully-furnished accomodations. This is done to lower the costs of moving our members in and out.

Similar accomodations are provided in SOME postings in the 10 Provinces, although I do not believe that there are ANY such accomodations in Ontario and Quebec. The Detachment here in Weyburn was built in the early 1960s and is a 2 story, 2 sided building - the one side is barracks, and the other is the office. The attached house USED to be reserved for the exclusive use of the Detachment Commander, but when we began getting decent wages, the Commanders began buying their own homes. Currently, a single woman lives in the house, and pays about $150/month, including heat, electricity and water. Technically, we HAVE barracks rooms upstairs on the office side, but 2 rooms were made into a single conference room, the 3rd is our locker room with the treadmill and stationary bike and the 4th room houses our universal gym and free weights.

Besides Training, I lived for 15 months in a room above the office, and later in the back of the office, at my first 2 postings. At my 3rd posting, I was renting an apartment, then rented a house, then bought a house from a member that was being transferred, all within 4 years. At my 4th posting, my family and I rented a house for the 4 years there. At my 5th posting, and here, my family and I have lived in 2 different homes that we bought.

Cost of living in this Province is quite reasonable, but other places, like the Lower Mainland District of BC, it is quite high; in the LMD of BC, when our members get transferred from one Detachment to another, they usually just change their commute direction, just so they can maintain and build equity in their homes.

[Sgt Lobster]

Now this is a real touchy issue in the UK ! Until September 1994, a member of a police force was entitled to free accomodation or an allowance in lieu of.

All Police Authorities maintained stocks of housing for this purpose. In London both the Metropolitan and City Police owned section houses, which were reserved for single officers. At one time many larger police stations also had accomodation for single officers. In many forces, rural beat officers still live in the police station.

Most married officer were allocated a house, indeed at one time many forces prohibited officers from buying property until they had several years service in. They could do this because officers had to live in accomodation approved by the chief officer, and it also made moving officers much easier. If accomodaton was not provided you got an allowance towards your housing costs. However this allowance has not been payable since September 1994 to new entrants. As a result of this most forces have flogged their police houses. So we now have a situation were post September 1994 officers, earn thousands less than older officers who have retained their rent or housing allowance, this not unsurprisingly upsets some people !!




Lobster.

[PeteBroccolo]

Way back in 1873, obviously none of us were paid enough to either get married and/or own land, so we had to have barrack accomodations. Our Force stuck with it until the mid-1970s when they started to give us a decent salary.

It used to be that transfers were nearly as fast as being notified Thursday that you were moving from Pinky, Saskatchewan to Montreal, Quebec as of Tuesday (substitute Williston, ND and New York, NY for above and you get the idea of change of scenery and distance involved!)

Our members also were restricted from being married until they had 7 years service, $2000 cash in the bank, their intended was security-cleared AND they had permission. MANY of our members were booted-out for getting secretly-married and/or for fathering a child out of wed-lock!