Veterans facing foreclosures as Trump administration pulls plug on Biden program: report
At a time when veterans with VA loans are struggling to keep their homes out of foreclosure, the Veterans Administration (VA) under Donald Trump’s stewardship has decided to pull the plug on a program built specifically to keep them housed.
According to a report from NPR, the program known as VA Servicing Purchase (VASP) is on the chopping block with the approval of Republicans who feel President Joe Biden “unilaterally” forced it upon the country.
As NPR’s Chris Arnold, Quil Lawrence wrote, VASP helps veterans who have fallen behind on their home payments by placing them in a program that lumps the delinquent amount into a separate “low-interest rate loan that the VA then owns outright.”
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Without that support, there is a risk that the nearly 90,000 VA loans that are in trouble, with a third already in foreclosure, will come due and force vets from their homes if they can’t find alternative loans to fill the gap.
The NPR report notes, “Mortgage industry groups, housing advocates and veterans organizations have been warning the VA that shutting down VASP without replacing it with something else first would result in large numbers of vets losing their homes, many of whom are in this financial peril because of the VA’s own mistakes.”
According to Mike Calhoun, president of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending, “With the expiration of VASP, tens of thousands of Veterans and their families are now at significant risk of losing their homes,” before adding, the “VA should extend VASP until this program is up and running.”
In a letter to Congress sent last month, the non-profit National Consumer Law Center warned, “Without VASP or immediate access to alternative policy tools that provide relief … many of these homeowners will be forced to sell their homes and move or face foreclosure.”
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