Veterans fear the VA's new foreclosure rescue plan won't help them

While Ed O'Connor was in the hospital losing his leg, loan servicers were telling him he might be losing his house too.

O'Connor is a 69-year-old Marine Corps veteran. Last year doctors amputated his right leg — a complication, he believes, of a blood infection he picked up serving in the Philippines. While he was recovering from the surgery, scary letters were arriving at home.

"They were going to do a foreclosure on me," he said. "Being in and out of the hospital, I'm talking on the phone, calling people up. You know, it's hard."

Following an investigation by NPR that found thousands of veterans were about to lose their homes through no fault of their own, the VA called for a pause on foreclosures in its VA home loan program while it rolls out a plan to help. But it now appears that may not be enough for many veterans like O'Conner.

O'Connor is among tens of thousands of veterans who took what's called a COVID forbearance on a VA home loan — in his case because his wife lost her job during the pandemic. That allowed him to defer paying the mortgage and keep his home. Like many vets, he says he was promised he could resume normal payments after 6 to 18 months when the hardship was over, and simply add the missed payments to the end of the mortgage.

"Add the payments to the end of your mortgage ... your rate won't increase, the payments remain the same," is how O'Connor says it was described to him. "And I said, man, this would be a great relief."

That's not what happened though. Instead, in October of 2022, the VA ended the part of its forbearance program that allowed missed payments to be moved to the back of the loan term. And that suddenly stranded veterans who were still on a forbearance leaving them with no affordable way to get current on their loans and resume normal payments.

O'Conner says he was told he needed to pay back more than $32,000 in a lump sum to catch up.

"I don't have $32,000!" O'Connor told NPR, as he sat in his new wheelchair at home in Fredericksburg, Va.

After the NPR investigation last month revealed that thousands of veterans were in this same situation, four U.S. Senators fired off a letter to the VA demanding an immediate pause in the foreclosures. Just days later, the VA did just that, on Nov. 17. The pause will last through May of 2024, when the VA expects to have a new program in place to help vets avoid foreclosure with a low interest rate loan and payments they can actually afford.

But O'Connor's troubles don't seem to be over, because the VA's rescue plan may exclude many vets who already took what they considered to be their only option to save their homes.

O'Connor is one of an untold number of veterans who ended up with much higher mortgage payments because they were pushed into loan modifications. Those modifications rolled the missed payments back into the mortgage — but with a new loan that had to be at current interest rates, which are about double what they were just two years ago.

"So they upped my mortgage rate," O'Conner said. "And I'm kind of like, wait a minute, you guys are really screwing me here."

"When I got the home, I was only paying $1,750. Now I'm paying $2,400," he said.

O'Connor said he's had to adjust his lifestyle to make the new mortgage payment.

"I make the car payment late, maybe two credit bills late, you know, we don't go to the store that often," says O'Connor, who is trying to stretch his disability check from the VA plus his wife's pay from a part-time job at a shopping mall. He feels betrayed by a program that was meant to help him.

"You know, they give you promises and then they give you an empty cup. I'm just kind of disgusted with it all."

NPR has heard from veterans across the country, from Hawaii, to Florida, to New York, who all say they, too, are stuck with a much more costly mortgage.

"It doesn't seem quite fair to me," said U.S. Rep. Mark Takano, the leading Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs committee, in an interview with NPR. "We've got to keep an eye on this."

VA officials say they don't know how many veterans have been pushed into a loan modification that dramatically raised their payments.

But this week at a press conference, NPR asked VA secretary Denis McDonough about vets in this situation, and he urged them to reach out to the VA.

"There may be bigger policy fixes later, but we want them to be in touch with us now," McDonough said. "We're also concerned obviously to hear that some of our vets feel that they've been misled. So we're looking into that."

Former Marine Joe Mena feels misled.

Mena joined the Marines in 2007 and deployed to Iraq. He served eight years, came home to start a family, then joined the National Guard in time to get called up during the pandemic. After he lost his regular job, he heard about the VA's mortgage forbearance.

"I thought that was, honestly, the coolest thing in the world," says Mena.

Mena says he was told the same thing other veterans recall: just defer paying, and those missed payments would get shifted to the back end of his 30-year mortgage.

"I was like, I don't mind having a 31-year mortgage, that's fine," he said. "I'm gonna be living in this house forever."

But in September he was told by his mortgage company that the deal had changed.

"They sent me a statement that said that forbearance is up," Mena said. And if he wanted to avoid foreclosure he had to pay $57,000 dollars for the missed payments, or he could do a loan modification.

Mena says he didn't have $57,000. So he says the company placed him into a loan modification that he can't afford. It pushes up his monthly payments by $1300 per month, to $3600.

His first payment is due today, Dec. 1. He's working, again as a certified nursing assistant, but he has no idea how he'll be able to keep up with such a big payment.

Mena said he reached out to the VA and others but he's not sure what to do. The stress is a serious issue for him. Mena lost a good friend in a particularly bad way in Iraq and it still haunts him. He's in therapy twice a week for post-traumatic stress.

"I suffer from suicidal ideation constantly. So this is one of the times, this is a type of trigger that would put me in an inpatient facility," he said.

Mena grew up with four siblings, and a single mom who did her best — but they did get evicted from apartments sometimes. This is the first time he's owned a house.

He's exactly who the VA home loan has been intended to help since 1944 – veterans who need a leg up to enjoy the stability that comes with home ownership.

"My one goal is to have a house for my kids," he says. "I'm trying to keep it all together for the kids that I love and my wife that I love very much. But I'm not together at all.

"I wasn't together before I found out about this. And now it's... I'm losing it," he says.

Mena has three kids and a baby on the way in March. He has no idea if this new program the VA is rolling out is going to help him.

Adding to his confusion, his paperwork appears to show that he is in a trial period for the loan modification. He'd like to back out, and wait for the VA's new rescue plan, but he doesn't know if he can.

Mena's mortgage company, LoanCare, declined to discuss his situation and said in a brief statement to NPR that the company "complies with all applicable laws, regulations, and agency guidelines" for mortgages.

Meanwhile, for the 40,000 homeowners with VA loans who did not get into loan modifications yet, and are currently in the foreclosure process or delinquent, the VA this week released formal guidance related to its pause on foreclosures.

At his press conference, VA Secretary McDonough said his agency has met with companies servicing more than 90 percent of all VA loans, and that they will comply.

"This will pause the foreclosure process for these veterans through May 31 next year, 2024, giving us the additional time that we need to help these veterans find solutions to stay in their homes," he said.

Still, as of earlier this week that message did not appear to be trickling down to all the people working at mortgage companies.

"I received a call yesterday, come to find out we're officially in the first day of the foreclosure process," Marine Corps veteran Jason Miles told NPR.

Miles served in the Marines for a decade starting in 2003. He did four tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

He lost a sales job during the pandemic and had to take a forbearance. These days he's a teacher and a coach at Clinton Christian Academy, a high school in Clinton, Miss.

Miles spoke to NPR from the school's athletic office. He has three kids. His oldest daughter is on a poster for the school volleyball team that's hung on the wall behind his desk.

"I know every dad brags on their kids," he says, clearly proud of her.

But the past few months he's been keeping from the kids that the family doesn't have any affordable way to get caught up on about $20,000 of missed mortgage payments.

"This is horrifying," he said. "I'm scared to death that we're about to lose our home."

Miles told the mortgage company, called Mr. Cooper, that he'd read reports that the VA is pausing foreclosures so families like his could get help. He said the company representative still told him, "you have to pay the full amount back or you're going into foreclosure."

After the VA issued its official guidance on Thursday Mr. Cooper said in a statement to NPR, "We are taking immediate steps based on this guidance and look forward to expanded options to support Veterans exiting their pandemic forbearance plans."

The VA said it is encouraging all veterans who are struggling with their mortgage, whether they're in a loan modification already or not, to contact the VA at 1-877-827-3702 or visit at va.gov/housing-assistance. [Copyright 2023 NPR]