More Than 15,000 Veterans Hit With Higher Mortgage Payments After VA Ended Rescue Program
More than 15,000 veterans with VA-backed home loans are paying at least $150 more a month after the Department of Veterans Affairs ended a low-interest rescue program last year.
That is the central finding of an NPR investigation based on previously unreported VA data. More than 700 of those veterans saw their monthly mortgage payments climb by $1,000 or more.
NPR found that 63% of veterans who received a VA loan modification after the change ended up with a higher payment. On loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the figure is 2%.
Overall, more than 26,000 veterans saw higher payments across more than 40,000 modifications made from May 2025 through September 2026, LiveNOW from Fox reported in its summary of the data.
The program at issue, the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program, or VASP, let the VA buy delinquent loans and roll missed payments into a new mortgage at a 2.5% interest rate.
The VA ended VASP administratively on May 1, 2025. Veterans who fell behind afterward were instead pushed into standard loan modifications, many at interest rates far above 2.5%, NPR found.
Why Republicans Pushed to End It
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., backed the move. In an April 2025 joint statement, they said the Biden-era program sent billions toward “bailouts for lenders.”
The lawmakers said the VA had spent more than $5.4 billion buying loans, averaging roughly $292,000 to $320,000 each, when the typical delinquency was about $22,500.
“Today, the Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA’s VASP program,” Bost and Van Orden said then. Neither responded to NPR’s requests for comment on the new findings.
Mortgage industry groups had urged the VA to keep VASP until a replacement was ready. “This was a foreseeable outcome of abruptly ending a program without a replacement in place,” Matthew Douglas of the Housing Policy Council told NPR.
Congress created that replacement, the VA Partial Claim Program, in a law signed July 30, 2025. The VA launched it on June 15, 2026, and VA Secretary Doug Collins said it “will help keep thousands of Veterans in their homes.”
Mortgage servicers have until Nov. 28 to fully implement the program, according to VA guidance to servicers. NPR reported most companies don’t offer it yet, and it won’t help veterans already locked into costlier modifications.
Meanwhile, foreclosures on VA loans rose to a 10-year high after VASP ended, NPR reported, citing industry data.
Army veteran Scott Boyd, who lives near Columbus, Ohio, saw his rate rise from 2.75% to 6.75% on a loan stretched to 40 years. His payment jumped $1,181 a month. “This is just so broken,” he recalled thinking.
VA press secretary Quinn Slaven told NPR that “many leading voices in Congress supported the termination of VASP, which put the entire VA home loan program at risk.”
Slaven said the home loan program “is based on the premise that while Veterans may need some assistance, they must generally be able to make their mortgage payments.”
Rep. Mark Takano of California, the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, called the outcome “the height of insanity.”
The VA says it helped about 173,000 veterans avoid foreclosure in fiscal 2025. Veterans struggling with a VA-backed mortgage can call the department at 877-827-3702, option 6, according to the VA.
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