INVESTIGATION: 10,000 veterans lost their homes because Trump eliminated the safety net

10,000 Homes Lost in Less Than a Year

Since the closure of VASP, more than 10,000 veterans have lost their homes to foreclosure, according to data from ICE Mortgage Technology, which tracks these statistics in real time. This is the highest rate of foreclosures on VA loans since 2016.

Ten thousand. This is not an abstract number. These are ten thousand families who have received an eviction notice. Ten thousand closed doors. Ten thousand American flags taken down from porches that no longer belong to those who hung them there.

And behind every door, a variation on the same story: a man or woman who wore a uniform, who signed a contract with their country, and whose country tore up its end of the bargain.

Another 90,000 in line

But the figure of 10,000 is only the tip of the iceberg. An additional 90,000 veterans are currently behind on their mortgage payments or already in foreclosure proceedings. Ninety thousand. The equivalent of an entire city of military families living on borrowed time.

The VA is promising a new program. It won’t be up and running for several months. For veterans whose homes are scheduled for foreclosure in the coming weeks, this promise is about as useful as an umbrella delivered after the hurricane.

The Mortgage Industry’s Ignored Testimony

What turns this crisis from a tragedy into a scandal is the deliberate nature of the decision. The Trump administration was not caught off guard. It was not the victim of unforeseeable circumstances. It received explicit, documented, public warnings—and ignored them all.

In March 2025, during a hearing before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, representatives from the mortgage industry detailed, with figures to back them up, what would happen if VASP were eliminated without a replacement. This was not a vague prediction. It was a mathematical certainty.

Elizabeth Balce of the Mortgage Bankers Association did not mince words. Her answer to the question “What will happen?” fit into three syllables: Foreclosure. Period.

The VA’s Silence

When asked by NPR about the reasons for this elimination without replacement, VA officials did not respond. No justification. No explanation. No defense. Silence—that administrative silence which is the most eloquent form of institutional contempt.

Steve Sharpe, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, sums up the absurdity with surgical precision: “We should have something in place to prevent people from losing their homes.” The key word in that sentence isn’t “something.” It’s “should.” Because right now, there is nothing.

The VA Loan—A Broken Promise

The VA-backed home loan is marketed to service members as one of the most valuable benefits of military service. No down payment. Competitive interest rates. Terms designed to help those who have served become homeowners.

Millions of veterans have built their lives around this promise. They bought homes. They enrolled their children in schools. They planted trees in yards they believed were their own.

But since May 2025, veterans with VA loans have had fewer protections and fewer options than any other struggling American homeowner. The conventional program offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provides loan modifications. The FHA program offers alternatives. VA loans, however, no longer offer anything.

The most valuable benefit of military service has become, through the deliberate inaction of those who claim to support the troops, a trap.

Worse Off Than Civilians

There is an irony so bitter it becomes physically painful: the men and women who risked their lives to defend their country are now less protected from foreclosure than civilians who have never worn a uniform.

And yet, every political speech, every rally, every convention—from both parties—begins or ends with the same phrase: “We support our veterans.”

The 10,000 who have lost their homes will appreciate the support.

Months behind schedule, hundreds of dollars more

The VA says it is working on a new program to replace VASP. But the details paint a less reassuring picture than the press release suggests.

First, the timeline: the program won’t be up and running for several months. For veterans whose homes are about to be auctioned off, those months feel like an eternity. Every week of delay means one more family on the street.

Next, the substance: housing organizations and mortgage industry professionals warn that even once in place, this new program could leave veterans with monthly payments several hundred dollars higher than what VASP offered. For families already struggling financially, a few hundred dollars more per month isn’t an adjustment—it’s a death sentence in the making.

Replacing a Safety Net with a Single Thread

The VASP program was a safety net. What’s being proposed to replace it is more like a tightrope—technically, there’s something under your feet, but there’s zero margin for error, and the fall is still fatal.

Steve Sharpe and other consumer advocates point out that the new terms could still leave veterans at a disadvantage compared to conventional homeowners. The absurdity remains: serving your country entitles you to a loan, but if you run into trouble, that same loan offers you less protection than the one held by your neighbor who has never left his couch.

The Costs Cited—and the Costs Overlooked

Republicans in Congress who pushed for the elimination of VASP cited one argument: cost. The program was too expensive. A less costly alternative had to be found.

Let’s examine this argument in light of the facts. 10,000 foreclosures trigger a cascade of costs: neighborhoods that lose property value, local governments that lose tax revenue, families who end up on welfare, children who change schools, veterans whose PTSD worsens due to the stress of losing their homes, psychiatric emergencies, and hospitalizations.

No one in Congress has quantified these costs. Because they don’t appear in the VA’s budget. They appear in the budgets for health care, education, social services, and law enforcement. They are real. They are massive. And they are invisible to those who don’t want to see them.

The Political Calculus

There is an even more cynical calculation at play. Veterans facing foreclosure do not form an organized voting bloc. They do not protest in front of the Capitol. They do not lobby. They are scattered across thousands of towns and villages, each trapped in their own crisis, too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads to organize collective resistance.

The mortgage industry, on the other hand, has lobbyists. Budget advocates have think tanks. Struggling veterans have a trailer attached to a truck.

The Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality

The Trump administration has made pro-veteran rhetoric a cornerstone of its political identity. Campaign speeches are rife with references to military sacrifice. Rallies are punctuated by ovations for veterans in the audience. The social media feeds of the president and his allies are saturated with flags, eagles, and solemn tributes to the men and women in uniform.

And meanwhile, in the real world—the one where people need walls and a roof over their heads, not applause—10,000 of those same veterans have received eviction notices.

Rhetorical patriotism doesn’t pay the monthly mortgage payments.

Secretary Collins and Institutional Silence

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins appeared before the Senate committee in January. The hearings continue. Declarations of intent are multiplying. And while Washington deliberates, Spokane takes action.

There is a law of physics that applies in politics just as it does in physics: inaction is a force. When a government chooses to do nothing in the face of a crisis it has itself created, that is not neutrality—it is an active decision to let the consequences fall on those who have no power to defend themselves.

Iraq, PTSD, Explosions

In Queensbury, New York, Kevin Conlon is trying to keep his home. A combat veteran of the Iraq War, he suffers from PTSD and traumatic brain injuries related to explosions from improvised explosive devices. His wife, Jenny, stands beside him in front of their home—a home they don’t know if they’ll be able to keep.

The Conlons are among the thousands of veterans left in limbo by the constant back-and-forth of programs being canceled and reinstated. They’ve tried to catch up on their payments. They’ve filled out the forms. They’ve waited for responses. And the responses never came—or when they did, the rules had changed.

The Administrative Yo-Yo

This may be the cruelest aspect of this crisis: the back-and-forth. Veterans have been tossed between programs that were created and then canceled, moratoriums that were imposed and then lifted, and promises that were made and then abandoned. Each change in direction has left them more confused, more in debt, and closer to foreclosure than the one before.

The NPR investigation describes this situation as a “multi-year debacle” within the VA. The word is precise. A debacle is not an accident—it is a systemic collapse caused by incompetence, indifference, or both.

Biden Set the Stage

Intellectual honesty demands that we acknowledge this: this crisis did not begin with Trump. It was the Biden administration that made the initial mistake by abruptly shutting down the pandemic relief program while thousands of veterans were still in the midst of receiving treatment. It was that decision that created the impossible situation in which bona fide landlords found themselves facing insurmountable arrears.

Biden opened the floodgates. And that must be stated clearly.

Trump refused to close it

But what Biden opened by mistake, Trump chose to leave gaping wide open by design. The difference is fundamental. Biden’s mistake was corrected—first by media pressure from NPR, then by the foreclosure moratorium, and finally by the creation of VASP.

Trump undid the correction. Knowingly. After being warned. After the mortgage industry said exactly what would happen. After the word “foreclosure” was uttered under oath before a congressional committee.

There is a difference between negligently starting a fire and removing the fire extinguishers while knowing the fire is burning.

Those Who Don’t Make the Headlines

Leann Ledford spoke to NPR. Kevin Conlon agreed to be photographed in front of his home. But for every veteran who speaks out, hundreds remain silent. Out of shame. Out of pride. Out of exhaustion. Out of the conviction—rooted in years of broken promises—that speaking out won’t change anything.

Veterans struggling with mortgage payments don’t fit the stereotype of the “homeless veteran” that charity campaigns use in December. They are families with children in school, neighbors who mow their lawns, taxpayers who pay their taxes—until the day a decision made in Washington turns their stability into quicksand.

The Cost of Silence

There is another aspect that the numbers do not capture: the effect of foreclosure stress on veterans who are already suffering from PTSD, brain injuries, and depression. The threat of losing one’s home is one of the most intense stressors documented in clinical psychology. For someone whose nervous system is already in a constant state of alert, it is a trigger for a crisis.

How many psychiatric hospitalizations has this decision caused? How many family crises? How many suicide attempts? No one is counting. No one will count. These figures do not appear in the budget tables that justified the elimination of VASP.

How much is a veteran worth?

Here is the question that should be asked of every elected official who voted to eliminate VASP, every VA official who signed the closure order, and every budget advisor who recommended this decision:

How much does a homeless veteran cost?

Not in moral terms—they clearly don’t care about that. In purely financial terms. Because the studies exist. A homeless veteran costs the public system between $30,000 and $50,000 a year in health care, emergency services, social assistance, and the justice system. A program to prevent homelessness costs a fraction of that amount.

Eliminating VASP didn’t save any money. It shifted the expense—from the VA’s ledgers to those of hospitals, shelters, and courts. And in the process, it destroyed lives.

The Illusion of Savings

This is the intellectual scam at the heart of this decision. You don’t save money by eliminating a safety net. You shift the cost of the fall to other budgets, other institutions, other human beings. The veteran who loses his home doesn’t disappear. His family doesn’t disappear. His children don’t disappear. They end up somewhere—and that somewhere comes at a cost.

But that cost doesn’t show up in the VA’s column. And in Washington, what doesn’t show up in your column doesn’t exist.

How the Discontinued Program Worked

VASP—the VA Servicing Purchase program—operated under a relatively simple mechanism. When a veteran fell behind on their VA-guaranteed mortgage, the program allowed the VA to buy the loan from the lender and restructure it with terms the veteran could afford: reduced monthly payments, back payments rolled into the balance, and an adjusted interest rate.

This was not a gift. It was not debt forgiveness. It was a restructuring—the same type of tool that banks use every day for struggling businesses, but applied to human beings who have served their country.

The Current Gap

Today, this mechanism no longer exists. A veteran who falls behind on their VA loan has no dedicated federal program to turn to. They are referred back to their lender—who has no legal obligation to restructure the loan and who often has a financial incentive to foreclose.

The result is exactly what the industry predicted, with clockwork precision: foreclosure, period.

What “Supporting the Troops” Really Means

In almost every American town, there are houses with a flag on the porch. Sometimes it’s the American flag. Sometimes it’s the flag of a branch of the military—Marines, Army, Navy. These flags say something about the people who live behind those walls. They say: someone here has served.

When that house is foreclosed on, the flag is taken down. The bank doesn’t keep it. The new owner—often an investor—doesn’t put it back up. The flag disappears. And with it, the visible trace of the contract between a citizen and their country.

Supporting the troops costs nothing when it’s limited to bumper stickers. It starts to cost something when you have to fund programs that keep those who’ve worn the uniform from sleeping in their cars. And that’s exactly when the support evaporates.

The Reality Check

Ten thousand veterans have lost their homes since May 2025. Ninety thousand more are on the brink of losing theirs. The administration had been warned. It eliminated the program anyway. The new program won’t be ready for months. And even when it is, it will offer veterans less protection than the programs available to ordinary civilians.

These aren’t opinions. These are facts. And these facts tell a simple story: in the America of 2026, having risked your life for your country does not protect you from losing your home because of that same country.

The Unwritten Contract

There is an unwritten contract between a nation and those who defend it. This contract states: if you wear the uniform, if you go where we send you, if you do what we ask—we will take care of you when you return.

This contract has never been fully honored. The history of American veterans is marked by betrayals, from the Bonus Army of 1932 to Vietnam veterans treated as outcasts, to the 2014 VA wait-time scandal. Each generation of veterans learns, the hard way, that the promises made to soldiers are the easiest to break—because soldiers are trained to endure in silence.

The Choice of 2026

But 2026 presents a particularly clear choice. The program exists. The funds exist. The mechanism has been tested and it worked. The only thing missing is the political will to maintain it.

10,000 homes. That’s not a campaign figure. It’s a figure representing the damage. And with every day that passes without a replacement program in place, that number rises.

Leann Ledford, in Spokane, looks at the Marine Corps flag in front of her house. Her husband survived Afghanistan. She doesn’t know if he’ll survive losing his home a second time.

The America that sends its children into battle must decide whether it is also the America that throws them out onto the street when they return. Because right now, the answer is written in the foreclosure records of 10,000 courts across the country.

And that answer is yes.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost