Housing appointment backlog addressed

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Armando A. Schwier-Morales
  • 86th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany --  The Kaiserslautern Military Community housing office at Vogelweh, Germany recently took steps to reduce a four-week backlog for customers who need appointments. All overseas housing allowance documents are still being processed in a timely manner to start and stop allowances.

The backlog, a combined Housing and Furniture Management Office issue, began with 21 unfilled employee vacancies, an increase of approximately 3,000 customers over the past year, and computer problems. For servicemembers coming to Ramstein, a two, or three, week delay may exceed their 30-day allotment of temporary lodging allowance, that may cause them out-of-pocket expenses. However, the housing office will continue reimbursement as long as it's through no fault of the member. The KMC office serves more than 47,000 Department of Defense personnel.

"The vacancies, increase of customers and the customer login system failure all caused a perfect storm," said Debbie Perez, Kaiserslautern Military Housing office director. "This is my third summer here. I have never seen it this busy, but we are taking steps to make it better."

The housing office is attempting to curb by taking steps to decrease wait time and visits to the facility. According to Perez, one of the best ways to curb servicemember wait time is appointments when people find a home, as those appointments take priority over walk-ins.

Housing personnel also recommend processing certain services through their organizational email boxes. These processes include out-processing Temporary Lodging Allowances, questions and answers about house hunting, overseas housing allowance stops, and FMO pickups. To date, emailing services reduced visits to their facility by 15 percent, according to Perez.

One aspect housing employees have taken time to work on is the walk-in system. Due to a recent computer crash they reverted to an analog sign in without tracking and lack of focus on customer needs. The computer crash combined with the increase in customers and lack of staff caused five to six hour wait times.

"When the system was down, we didn't know who was signing in and what they were being seen for; it was chaotic," said Perez. "We decided to get our arms around it, implement the numbering system and use (a different software program) to log and track what people are here for."

Now by offering the email out-processing, a slight draw down in customers, instituting a take a number and wait system, and a different computer with different software the wait time has been reduced to approximately two hour for contract reviews. Contract reviews is the longest wait time, however, depending on the requested service individuals can expect to wait from five minutes to roughly two hours.

To prevent this from happening next year, the housing office is looking at the possibility of hiring seasonal, surge support to help processing servicemembers and their families during the summer months.

For more information about the housing, servicemembers can contact the housing office at DSN 489-6671 or commercial 0631-536-6672.