XPost: soc.veterans, alt.home.repair, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   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'Connor.   
      
   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 six 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'Connor 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'Connor 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 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 $1,300 per month, to $3,600.   
      
   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   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)