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homeownership
'The Most Anti-Veteran President in History': VA Families Losing Homes After Trump Killed Loan Program
"It's a struggle. Especially with everything else being inflated in the country," said one US Army vet, "you know, with groceries, gas... I'm like, what the hell?"
Apr 02, 2026
Just as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress were warned would happen, close to 100,000 US veterans are currently behind on their mortgage payments or are in the process of foreclosure as a result of the White House's decision to shut down a Department of Veterans Affairs program that helped people with VA-backed home loans when they were behind on their monthly payments.
As NPR reported Thursday, more than 10,000 have already lost their homes, nearly a year after the Trump administration abruptly did away with the VA Servicing Purchase (VASP) program.
The program was rolled out during the Biden administration, after the VA ended a pandemic-era assistance program that had allowed VA home loan borrowers to gradually pay back mortgage payments that they had needed to skip.
Under VASP, the VA purchases home loans that were in default from mortgage services and then modified the loans.
In March 2025, a representative from the Mortgage Bankers Association told the House Veterans Affairs Committee that widespread foreclosures would result if the VASP program—which Republicans in Congress said had been created by former President Joe Biden for "political purposes... to undercut the VA Home Loan program—was not protected.
Despite the warning, the VASP program was halted two months later.
Nearly a year after the program's end, the VA is still developing a replacement to help veterans—many of whom are struggling to afford essentials just like the majority of other Americans as the cost of living crisis intensifies with rising fuel prices due to Trump's war on Iran.
Sources in the mortgage industry told NPR that many of the vets who have lost their homes so far had enough disability benefits or other income to avoid foreclosure, had the VASP program remained in operation.
NPR interviewed Leann Ledford, whose husband, a Marine veteran who served in Afghanistan, has a brain injury, experiences seizures, and suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. The family is one of tens of thousands who learned in October 2022 that the Biden administration had ended the earlier pandemic-era program and that they would have to pay a year's worth of back payments in one lump sum.
The Ledfords were also one of many veteran families who were unable to enroll in VASP before Trump abruptly shut it down.
Ledford told NPR that with her husband's $3,971 monthly disability check, they could have afforded mortgage payments under the VASP program.
Army veteran Jon Henry was also unable to enroll in VASP before it was shut down, and was forced to take a modified loan with payments that are $380 more per month than his original mortgage.
"It's a struggle," Henry told NPR. "Especially with everything else being inflated in the country, you know, with groceries, gas … I'm like, what the hell?"
NPR's reporting led Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), an Iraq War veteran, to denounced Trump as "the most anti-veteran president in history."
When Trump's new VA home loan assistance program is up and running—which isn't expected to happen for several more months, veterans will be able to move their missed payments to the back of their loan term. But in the current draft of the plan, reported NPR, "the VA is telling mortgage companies that if a new, modified loan at a higher interest rate only raises a veteran's monthly payment by up to 15%, they must place vets into that more costly loan."
"So a veteran with a $2,000 monthly mortgage payment could still be pushed into a modified loan that raises their payment by up to $300 a month. And they wouldn't be given the option of moving their missed payments to the back of their loan and keeping their original, lower-cost mortgage," reported the outlet.
Pete Mills of the Mortgage Bankers Association told the VA last month that under Trump's plan, "as drafted, veterans will continue to have worse options than similarly situated non-veterans."
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Report Urges US Government Relief for Homebuyers as Costs Spin ‘Out of Control’
"Buying a home has never been less affordable. Trump has made it worse."
Dec 17, 2025
With mortgage rates climbing and the median income a family needs to afford a home ballooning by nearly 50% in just the past five years, the advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative on Wednesday called on the federal government to take targeted, concrete actions to reverse the affordability crisis that President Donald Trump's policies are only making worse.
Groundwork's senior adviser for economic policy, Emily DiVito, joined former deputy director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti to release a report titled Unraveling the Mortgage Maze: How Government Can Make Homeownership More Affordable for American Families. The paper emphasizes that "at a time when American families are struggling with a severe housing affordability crisis, relief for overburdened consumers requires the federal government to reshape and strengthen its role in the mortgage financing system."
Because interest rates have been elevated since 2022, homeowners are "locked in" to their existing mortgages, with many young families feeling stuck in their "starter homes" even as they outgrow them. In addition to the impact on families, the "lock-in effect" is suppressing turnover, reducing supply, and contributing to more expensive houses.
Those consequences "ripple across generations and regions," wrote DiVito and Ramamurti in the report. "Today, younger families disproportionately confront a market in which suitable homes are scarce, mobility is costly, and the financial advantages once associated with homeownership are increasingly out of reach."
While the federal government intervened during the Great Depression and established new housing agencies and mortgage financing programs, homebuyers now have to contend with a "hybrid" system, with the government providing liquidity for financial firms and consumers relying on private loan services, lenders, and brokers to find an affordable mortgage and navigate the purchasing process.
Reducing home prices was part of the platform Trump campaigned on, but as with his tariffs' impact on grocery prices and the effect on electricity bills that his aggressive push for artificial intelligence expansion is having, the president's proposals would make the housing affordability crisis worse, DiVito and Ramamurti explained.
Trump and his Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director, Bill Pulte, "impulsively introduced a 50-year mortgage proposal in early November 2025 that would lower a family’s monthly payment on a median-priced home by less than $120, while saddling homeowners with higher interest rates and a slower path to equity," reads the report.
The administration is also working to privatize government-sponsored entities, which would raise mortgage rates and restrict credit "while generating huge windfalls for hedge funds and billionaires."
No other detailed proposals have been released by the White House for reducing costs for homebuyers, according to DiVito and Ramamurti.
The report offers four proposals that would provide families with "material relief":
- Cutting mortgage insurance premiums on millions of government-backed mortgages, which would save families hundreds of dollars per year and thousands over the life of their loans;
- Allowing families to keep their mortgage rate when they sell one home and buy another to help alleviate the lock-in effect that grinds the market to a halt, saving families more than $5,000 per year on mortgage costs;
- Offering low-rate direct federal loans so that consumers can benefit from the government’s low cost of borrowing; and
- Creating transparent pricing platforms so that consumers can better navigate these complicated markets with greater ease and efficiency.
The report points to the millions of homebuyers who are required to take out mortgage insurance each year—a transaction that adds thousands of dollars to their yearly housing payments while protecting their lender, not them.
Without congressional action, says the report, the Trump administration could lower the rate at which the mortgage insurance premium (MIP) is charged to borrowers—a step the federal government has taken before, as recently as 2023 when it saved an average of $453 annually for 1.1 million borrowers.
The government could also shorten the lifetime of MIP payments by requiring automatic termination earlier than currently required:
If a borrower puts down less than 10% on government-backed loans, the MIP will be assessed for the lifetime of the loan or until the borrower can refinance. If a borrower puts down more than 10%, MIP payments are automatically canceled after 11 years. [Private mortgage insurance] on the other hand, is supposed to be canceled automatically at 78% [loan-to-value], and borrowers can request early cancellation at 80%. However, many borrowers report that servicers fail to terminate their payments when they hit the threshold. Policymakers can amend Section 4902 of the Homeowners Protection Act (12 U.S. Code § 4902) to enable earlier cancellation of PMI, which is enforced by the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau].
Policymakers can also expand offerings for mobile mortgages, "an underutilized home loan product that could deliver thousands in cost savings to homeowners each year." Allowing buyers to assume the existing rate of a seller or bring their current rate with them to their new home would alleviate the lock-in effect, "freeing up existing housing supply and making it easier for families to move affordably and when they want—no matter the interest rate environment."
Mobilizing a mobile mortgage could save a family up to $5,078 annually, and with Baby Boomers owning 28% of the nation's largest homes, "more affordable and flexible mortgage financing could free up millions of existing homes for younger buyers or large families," wrote DiVito and Ramamurti.
Government-provided direct loans at the cost of borrowing is named in the report as "the most direct role" the Trump administration could take in the mortgage market.
"Doing so would extend the benefits of the government’s cheaper financing directly to consumers," reads the report. "To ensure that the program targets the low- and middle-income homeowners who are most likely to need and benefit from cheaper financing, awards could be pegged to the median purchase price of single-family homes in any given area. Income and credit thresholds could also be established, as they already are for government-backed mortgages, to allow for more efficient underwriting."
Policymakers could also create a centralized online platform listing all mortgage lenders' terms, fees, eligibility requirements, and customer service information, bringing "closely held industry information out of the shadows, [and] equipping consumers with the knowledge necessary to navigate the mortgage market successfully."
The CFPB found that 30% of borrowers do not comparison-shop for their mortgage and more than 75% apply for a mortgage at just one lender—costing the average homebuyer about $300 per year.
Making a centralized database available to borrowers would stop lenders from colluding on mortgage rates as Wells Fargo, Rocket Mortgage, and JPMorgan Chase have been accused of doing in a recent class action lawsuit.
"By leveraging the government’s unique financing power and regulatory authority to craft a mortgage system that is simpler, less costly, and more responsive to households’ needs," wrote DiVito and Ramamurti, "millions of families who feel buying a home is out of reach may finally be able to achieve and maintain homeownership."
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Property Insurance Is the Canary in the Climate Coal Mine
We too have a little bird trying to call our attention to a major problem. That bird is the insurance industry with its army of actuaries.
Nov 18, 2025
As the cost of insuring our houses escalates around the United States and the world, it appears that property insurance is acting like a canary in a coal mine.
Canaries used to be taken into coal mines because they served as an early warning system if dangerous gases were building up. Since the canaries were more sensitive to these gases than people, they protected the miners from life-threatening conditions. When the canary dropped dead, the miners could still get out.
Like the canaries, the actuaries who interpret data for insurance companies are more sensitive than most individual people to changes going on in the world. Actuaries earn big salaries because the financial health of their employers depends on them.
Things have already gotten so bad that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) recently sponsored a webinar panel discussion: "Extreme Weather Events and Insurance: Households, Homeowners, and Risk." (This link will take you to a video of the event.)
Any coal miner who refused to evacuate a mine when the mine’s canary keeled over—perhaps saying, “I don’t believe there is any real danger here”—would not have been long for this world.
The panelists were located in the United States (Washington, DC and Madison, Wisconsin) and England (London and Cambridge). Climate changes are not limited to the United States, nor is awareness that we need to do something about them if we can.
The panelists were not grinding particular political axes. They were discussing the measured fact that an increasing number of extreme weather events are destroying valuable property—housing, commercial buildings, streets, bridges, etc.—requiring insurance company payouts to policyholders.
These insurance payouts must be financed by the premiums charged to people who are insuring their property. As damages increase, the premiums also have to increase. Although premiums may be regulated by state regulators, if they do not allow the needed increases insurance companies will pull out of doing business in that state.
As insurance companies pull out, it may become more and more difficult—perhaps even impossible—for people to insure their houses. But if a house cannot be insured, banks won’t finance a mortgage on it, and if it cannot be financed the owner may be unable to sell it.
For many people, their home is their primary investment, and they cannot afford to live in it if they cannot insure it. If it burned down or was otherwise destroyed, they would be wiped out financially. But if they cannot sell it, then the homeowner is a real pickle.
Disrupted housing markets can produce disastrous results for a country’s economy in general, as we Americans discovered during the recession beginning around 2008.
The impact of a world that is heating up is not being felt as much in the United States as in many other countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia which are suffering from unusually long bouts of very hot weather, flooding downpours alternating with extreme droughts, forest fires, etc. Some island nations may be literally wiped out as melting icebergs and glaciers increase sea level, putting them underwater.
But enough extreme weather events are already occurring in the United States that the insurance companies must make major increases in their prices.
Any coal miner who refused to evacuate a mine when the mine’s canary keeled over—perhaps saying, “I don’t believe there is any real danger here”—would not have been long for this world.
Americans who continue to politicize discussion of global warming—either denying its existence, its extent, its speed, or its seriousness—will be like that coal miner. We too have a little bird trying to call our attention to a major problem. That bird is the insurance industry with its army of actuaries. We ignore that warning at our own risk, and at the risk of our children and grandchildren.
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