Kevin and Jenny Conlon live in upstate New York, not far from where he was stationed with the Army at Fort Drum. About 12 years ago, after Kevin's two combat tours in Iraq, the couple had a young kid and were struggling to pay rent and save money. Getting a VA loan meant that they could buy a house with no down payment. And they've been there ever since.
"That's the longest I've been in one place," said Conlon. "Without the VA loan, there was no way that we could have afforded to buy a house," his wife added.
The VA home loan has long been a bedrock benefit of the G.I. Bill, giving vets a leg up into the middle class.
But all that went awry for tens of thousands of vets like Conlon a few years ago, because of a blunder within the Department of Veterans' Affairs.
The vets were left facing foreclosure after the VA scuttled a key part of a pandemic-era mortgage relief program. When NPR first uncovered the VA's mistake, there were about 40,000 vets in danger of losing their homes. The VA responded by halting foreclosures for a full year while it rolled out a rescue plan.
NPR can now report that 15,000 veterans have so far been rescued by the VA's new loan program. But at the same time, there are efforts in Congress to scuttle the program, even though thousands of other vets, like Conlon, still need the help.
Vets left stranded through no fault of their own
Kevin Conlon's wounds from his time in Iraq aren't visible, but they've taken years to heal. He served two combat tours, almost back to back. Roadside bombs hit his convoys repeatedly and left him with traumatic brain injuries. On the second tour his best friend died when he hugged a suicide bomber to the ground, giving his life to protect his friends. The trauma and survivors' guilt wounded Conlon, he says, as bad as the blast injuries. He struggled with PTSD and thoughts of suicide for more than a decade before finally getting to a stable, healthy place.
"I am [OK] now," Conlon said, "For a long time I was not."
Jenny says the VA's mortgage forbearance program, which allows homeowners who are struggling financially to stop paying their mortgage for a period of time, was a big contributor to his recovery. "That's why we needed it, so he could go inpatient at a veterans program," she said.
But October of 2022, the VA abruptly pulled the plug on a key part of its forbearance program that had allowed homeowners to bundle up their missed payments together and move them to the back of their loan's term. That happened right as mortgage rates doubled to 7%, so basically refinancing wasn't an option either. Thousands of vets suddenly had no affordable way to come out of forbearance and get current on their VA home loans.
As a result, the Conlons have been falling farther and farther behind, and they say their family has nowhere to go if they lose this house.
" I joined right after September 11th." said Conlon, who grew up in Queens, N.Y., and was in Manhattan the day of the attacks.
"I was willing to die for what I believed in. And for someone [to]... take away the home that my family lives in? Like we've paid enough, we've really paid enough," he said.
Some lawmakers want to scuttle VA's new rescue program
At a recent House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee hearing, the head of the VA's home loans program, John Bell, testified that 15,000 veterans have had their troubled mortgages rescued by the new VA Servicing Purchase program, or VASP.
That number was not greeted with applause by some Republicans on the committee.
Wisconsin Republican Derrick Van Orden sees the VASP program as a threat to the entire VA home loan program.
"I understand the whole developmental process of this, and it was moronic," Van Orden said, "It gets rid of a bum loan, and it passes it off to the American taxpayers."
Van Orden said he doesn't like that VASP works by the VA buying a delinquent loan from the mortgage industry, then issuing a new low-interest rate loan to the vet homeowner. That new loan is then held on the VA's books. He, and some other Republicans, say that's too risky.
Van Orden has introduced two bills. One would allow vets who are behind on their mortgages to get current again through what's called a "partial claim" program, basically restarting what the VA pulled the plug on a few years ago when it created the crisis in the first place. That's a popular idea that unites both housing advocates, and the mortgage industry. l
Industry and housing groups issue dire warnings not to scrap VASP
Van Orden's other bill would cap the VASP rescue program at just 250 loans per year, which critics say hobbles the program to the point of essentially killing it.
At the hearing, Elizabeth Balce with the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), a trade group that works to advance the interests of real estate lenders, said that would be a disaster.
"Without VASP, VA would have foreclosed on tens of thousands of borrowers," she said. "MBA strongly opposes an arbitrary cap of 250 loans per fiscal year."
Balce said with tens of thousands of vets still behind on their mortgages, strangling the VASP program, especially before VA stands up an alternative, would have one clear result.
"Foreclosure. Period," she said, "That's really where it's gonna come to. The short answer is foreclosure."
Nonprofit consumer protection groups also submitted a letter to the committee warning of unnecessary foreclosures if VASP is capped but also supporting a new partial claim program at VA.
Vets hoping for the best
Meanwhile, Kevin Conlon hopes Congress doesn't scrap the VASP program before he and thousands of other vets can get current on their loans again.
"You're talking about getting rid of something that would keep me and my family in a home that we love, that we need, and to do that to us is just – it's intentionally cruel," he said.
All this is happening while the Trump administration has fired thousands of VA employees and says it plans to lay off about 80,000 more, which could slow the program down.
At the hearing, the VA's Bell claimed he didn't know how many of those firings have already hit the home loan division. And the VA took no position on either of the bills to scrape and replace VASP.
Have information you want to share about ongoing changes across the federal government? NPR's Chris Arnold can be reached at carnold@npr.org or contacted through encrypted communications on Signal at ChrisArnold.07. Quil Lawrence is at qlawrence@npr.org or QuilNPR.10
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