There is a one room per child policy. **Remember, the houses only go up to 5 bedrooms! If you have more than four children, it is possible to get the military to pay for your move off base if you are already in base housing. This may be a bit of a fight for you, but it is in the regulations that children over a certain age do not have to share a room. Our freinds had four children and then became pregnant with twins! The military paid and had them moved off base in November 2008. It can happen! Otherwise, if you choose to move off base, you must pay out of pocket.
OLD POLICY! This is just so you can see how it used to be. When we got here, we were only entitled to a two bedroom house and we have two children. They have very specific rules here on when you are eligible for more bedrooms. We have a boy and a girl. They told us that we couldn't be put on the waiting list for a three bedroom until our oldest was five. I think if your children are of the same sex, the oldest must be nine to be put on the waiting list.
New Townhomes
*Thank you to all who have donated your photos!
*Thank you to all who have donated your photos!
The kids in these pictures have been blurred out. If anyone has some better pictures of the new townhomes, please email them to me.
This is the back yard. All the new townhomes have driveways and garages. They have full size attics above the garage and there's a second attic above the house as well.
Town house kitchen
Storage/coat closet and stairs to bedrooms
Townhouse laundry room
Townhouse attic
Stairwell Apartments
New Remodeled Stairwell Apartments
The newly remodeled apartments are really nice and are completely remodeled. They gutted them and completely rebuilt them. Here are a couple of pictures from three different apartments.New Bathrooms
New Kitchen
This shows you the dining area. I labeled the photo to give you an idea of the layout for this apartment.
Master Bedroom
Laundry Room
Master Bedroom Closets
Starting at the rank of Colonel, you are eligable for a Quad Apartment. Still stairwell living, but only 4 apartments on two floors. You walk up the stairs, and there is a apartment to the left and the right, then you walk up to the next floor and the same as the first floor.
Senior NCO's and Majors are allowed a three bedroom house no matter how many kids you have.
Generals have brand new housing and live down a private, dead end street. These are single family homes and are very nice!
Also, when you are eligible to move, the military will not pay for it, you are responsible for the bill. The only way the military will pay for you to move is if you are moving to base housing from off base, or if there is something wrong with your base housing. If you make MSGT, you are eligible for a three bedroom, but you have to move yourself from base housing to base housing!
The radiator heaters in base housing, and I am sure the ones off base, are very hot. We don't even turn ours on because they just put out too much heat. When we first got here, we would turn the one on in the kids bedroom, and I would go in there in the middle of the night and it would be like an oven.
Rooms and Storage
The rooms in the house are pretty big. I was really surprised; everyone told me that all the houses and rooms are small. If you have two children that are the opposite sex, they will have to share a room until the oldest is 5 years old, then you can get on the waiting list for a three bedroom. I am not sure what the other rules are but I will try to find out and post them here. Base housing has lots of closet and storage space. The stairwell apartments have basements, and each family gets a storage cage approximately 4x6 ft. And when a maids room becomes available, each family also gets one. The maids rooms have closets in them too. I don't even think we needed one, because our cage wasn't even full. But, remember, you don't get one right away. We got ours about 5 months after we had been here. The new townhomes have garages and full attics you can use for storage.Play areas
Each housing area has a playground. This was our backyard in our first stairwell apartment. It had picnic tables, a gazebo, a sand box, basketball goal, ping pong table, and a swingset/climbing area. We only shared our backyard with our building because it backed up to the woods. 
Windows, Roladens, and Curtains
The windows in the houses are German windows. They are really big and they can be positioned in three different ways. They can be closed, tipped open at the top, or they open all the way up to the side.
This window is closed and you can see the handle is in the down position
This window is opened all the way; the next photo will show you how the window handle is adjusted for an open window
This window is open at a tilt with the next photo showing the handle position
Roladens are the shades that go on the outside of the windows. They are great for keeping out the light when it is 5am and bright as day out. When they are rolled up, you can't see them. They actually roll up into the wall or to an enclosure at the top of the windows. The old stairwell apartments do not have these, but the town homes and off base housing do.
(It is not pink, it is really white, when I brightened the photo, it distorted it a little.......) To raise or lower the roladen, you use the strap shown located to the right of the window. This shows the roladen only half down. When you put the roladen down, you can leave it to where there are these little gaps, they will let in some light. Shown here......
You can also close them all the way to let in no light at all.
If you want to hang curtains, you must put special wheels on them to hang in the curtain track (these are installed in the houses). You can buy the wheels here at the BX. There are two types of wheels that you can buy; clip-ons (for the non-sewer) or you can buy a special kind of tape that you sew on the top of the curtains. Then you hook the wheels into the tape. Personally, I think the sewing method looks much nicer (It is easier than it sounds). Here are some detailed instructions and photos on how to hang the curtains on the pre-installed German curtain thingies.....they are different than what you are used to! Sorry, these photos are really old so the quality is not that great. If someone wants to send me new pictures, I will gladly use them instead. Here you can see the track; this is attached to the wall and usually comes with the housing on and off base.
These might be kind of hard to see but I was hoping to give you an idea of how they were hung. There is a track (actually 2 or 3 so that you can hang multiple curtains, like a valance and a long curtain) and the wheels slide into the track. There are stops to put on the ends of the track so the curtains don't come off.
How do you attach the wheels to the curtains?
Fool proof Method:
You can buy the wheels with clips on them and just clip them to the top of the curtains like a clothespin. The you slip the wheels into the track.
Sewing Method:
You buy a special strip of a type of material tape with loops on it (shown above). You can get this in the linen shop at Ramstein in the curtain section, or in the fabric department at Vogelweh, or possibly off base. You sew the tape on the top of the wrong side of the curtain. You should sew the top and the bottom of the tape for best results. Then you guide the hook from the special wheel into the strip that you have sewn onto the curtain. There are loops sewn onto the strip.
Easy Method:
Attach small saftey pins to the top of the curtains. Then loop the wheels through the saftey pin (just as you would loop them through the tape). Then guide the wheels into the wheel track. No sewing involved and you don't mess up your curtains!**a tip for you! Curtains for base housing are easily made out of sheets. To cover one window, a full flat sheet fits nicely. For the double windows, use two full flat sheets. Or use a king size for more fullness in the curtain. If you don't have roladens, you will want dark covers for the windows in the summer and to keep the heat out from the sun. The sun beats right in here and makes it hot, even in the winter. They don't even look like sheets when you are finished and they are really easy to do! You just sew the strip at the top or put the clips on and you are done, you don't even have to cut anything!
