Living in Leesville, LA

Vernon Parish

Leesville is the Vernon Parish seat, anchoring a real, military-driven southwest-Louisiana economy directly next to Fort Johnson (formerly Fort Polk, renamed 2023), a real, verified 241,126-acre U.S. Army installation and home to the Joint Readiness Training Center, with a current garrison of roughly 32,351 soldiers, civilians, and family members. Leesville's housing runs below Louisiana's statewide median (approximately $156,300 versus approximately $219,800 statewide), though genuinely less dramatically discounted than some of this project's other Louisiana Tier C markets, reflecting real rental and housing demand tied to Fort Johnson's rotating military population -- median rent (approximately $850/month) runs closer to national norms as a result. Louisiana's genuinely low statewide property tax structure applies here too, driven by the real $75,000 homestead exemption, and active-duty military pay is exempt from Louisiana state income tax under existing state law, a real, direct benefit for Fort Johnson-affiliated service members. Louisiana's real 2024 tax reform set a flat 3% individual income tax rate effective Jan. 1, 2025, funded partly by a statewide sales-tax increase that now makes Louisiana's combined state-and-local sales tax rate (approximately 10.11%) the highest of any state nationally, applying in Leesville as it does statewide. Leesville's inland west-central Louisiana location gives it a real, meaningfully lower direct hurricane exposure than Louisiana's coastal parishes -- similar to this project's Eunice record, and distinct from Franklin's and Jennings's coastal exposure. Median household income (approximately $41,300) and an elevated poverty rate (approximately 21.7%) run below national levels, real context alongside the city's genuine military-driven economic base.

Explore Leesville in depth

• Cost of Living & Housing in Leesville
• Moving to Leesville: Pros, Cons & What to Know

Housing

Taxes

The tradeoffs

Who this fits

Best for: Best fits military families and service members stationed at or near Fort Johnson, budget-conscious movers benefiting from Louisiana's active-duty income-tax exemption and low property taxes, and those comfortable with a genuinely lower inland hurricane-exposure profile than coastal Louisiana.

Maybe not for you if: Probably not the right fit for movers seeking a purely civilian small-town housing market unaffected by military rotation cycles, or those prioritizing the very deepest housing-cost discount found in this project's other Louisiana Tier C markets -- Leesville's Fort Johnson-driven rental demand is a real, disclosed factor that keeps housing costs closer to national norms than Eunice, Franklin, or Jennings.