Within three years, almost all junior sailors living aboard ships in port will trade their mass berthing, gang heads and daily inspections for two-person barracks rooms with private bathrooms, cable and Wi-Fi.

Those changes mark the final phase of Homeport Ashore, a plan with roots in a 1996 decision to pay housing allowances to single E-6s on sea duty. That trickled down to E-5s and E-4s, and now has been expanded to the more ambitious goal of getting every shipboard sailor a place to stay ashore when his ship is in port.

The program has already made great strides. Four years ago, 24,000 junior enlisted sailors lived on ships, and a generation ago, most enlisted sailors of all ranks called their gray hulls home.