The veteran loan calamity
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Largest farming and out here.

yeah, it's nice picture.

a deep bouncing along a dirt road in rural oklahoma.

That was.

that is on the right to the left.

The left.

These are two of my colleagues and P.

R. Reporters, quill Lawrence and crisis al and they're pulling up to a house is I think that's .

right yeah kind of .

the house really that spent at the center of this astonishing and Frankly pretty bizarre problem that has been unfolding over the last couple years. they. Get out of the car microphones recording, of course.

how you doing good. How are you good?

You know, apologized that if we put microns in your face, no.

they're greeted by the homeowners. Ray and beachy queen rape served in .

the army in iraq.

IT was done in iraq. H, yeah, a body of mine. Bottom .

tattoo machine.

yeah. Liberty, okay, that's where .

we are .

very complex.

When Chris first met ray and Becky queen, they were about to lose their house because somewhere in some governmental office, a decision was made about how to help veterans keep their homes during covet. And IT had gone catastrophically wrong.

I have .

didn't want to talk to you in the first, like, honest, just not my my thing. When you told me how many people affected, I IT made me fill up Better about being, but wanting to to get this fixed.

Hello, and welcome to planet money. I'm going alone today. On the show, we ride along with our colleagues at N.

P. R. As they uncover a single change to some, like monkey mortgage terms that not many people were paying attention to. The result of that change, tens of thousands of veterans were about to lose their homes because of a policy meant to help keep them in those homes.

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to make sure everyone is .

rolling and rolling in the ag. And maryland is texting me about something.

This is the most Chris halal way to start in interview. Sorry, the attack y general, in another state is testing about something else. Chris Arnold is a reporter for npr investigations team. He has been on the show many times before and and this particular story starts when Chris GTA call from a lawyer.

the lawyer, he was like, look, I got a call from this guy and I know if I can help him. Miss houses already been for closed on as somebody screwed up. He he had a covered mortars for bands, and the families are .

about to be put out on the street. Yes, coved mortgage forebearance. When cove IT hit, twenty million people lost their jobs. But we hoped IT was gonna be a temporary thing.

And so congress said, like, hey, look, if you're a homeowner and you're in trouble, you are allowed to to temporary pause your mortgage payments and not lose your home. That is forebearance ts. And and it's become an important part of the crisis playbook.

the system, the financial system, learned after the two thousand and eight financial crisis in the foreclosure mass, and millions of people lose in their homes. IT learned that, like, well, everybody wins. If you, if you can avoid a for closure, like the people on the other end that are trying to collect the money win the igher or hood wins. The home winter wins so for bearance comes into play what's like art was something happened. I'm in between jobs, so I might not be able to pay my mortgage for three or four month, but i'm getting another jobs so just hanging with me here.

you know yeah and and even when there is not a crisis, you can usually work with your lender to pause mark ge payments for for just a few months, with cover to the government extended, that homeowners were ultimately allowed eighteen months of forebearance ts. However, Chris was hearing that something was going very wrong with that system, and IT seemed to be hitting one particular group of hookers.

I remember hearing from some lawyers who were people start about to lose that, how they start calling lawyers and and they were telling me they're getting a lot of calls from veterans like like something something wasn't right.

yes. So I was out in L A. Doing a story on homeless veterans actually that .

is quill Lawrence, our second guide today. Quill covers veterans affairs for N P, R.

And Chris reaches out to me and he's got some story about veterans losing their homes. And um i'm not used to hearing from Chris about veterans stories. He's the mortgage.

So Chris and q went searching for somebody who was in the middle of this big problem, somebody who was about to lose their home.

And eventually I got connected with this couple ryan Becky queen in in bartleby's klahowya and I was like, okay, you let's talk to these guys.

This is the this is the letter that I received my husband received yesterday um stating that our home is now in foreclosure. They're starting for closure proceeding rain .

beaky queen have four kids. Ray works for a veterans nonprofit, veterans education stuff back is a social worker. And a few years ago, they moved to oklahoma for beck's job.

We purchase the home that we are in now in twenty to a june of twenty twenty one. Big jim.

yeah, we have moved here at the middle of june twenty. no. Oh, when we bought the house.

Yeah, yeah. So just and just so you're where I I, I have brain damage from my time in iraq. And so my memory is absolutely not great. So that one, becket has mostly talking because she's basically the memory bank for both of us.

Ray and Becky were able to buy their home because of one of the key benefits of military service, what's known as a va homeloans. It's a loan that is backed by the department of veterans affairs.

and these loans date back to a world war two um veterans all the just returning from the war IT was a way for them to get a leg up to the middle class part of the deal and are the reason veterans are protected class is yes because when they come back, you want some stability for them. So the the deal that they get includes in the health care if they needed and some benefits for disability like rahs. And also this really sweet homeland on with in no money down and a really good interest rate and .

the queens are able to get that no money down low rate mortgage, in part because the department of veterans affairs access this almost like very good, very rich friend for the queens. The V. A basically says two mortgage lenders, hey, you can lend to the queens, and we promise one way another, you will get paid back and and look like this is something the U.

S. Government does for most people who buy a home. You've likely heard of 3 mac or fani made the F。

H. A. These are the the massively rich friends that back most of the homeloans in the U. S. And and that makes IT less risky for banks to make loans and has generally brought mortgage rates down. But yeah, anyway, IT is the department of veterans affairs that helped ray and Becky queen get the house that they show to Christ quill.

And in the kitchen, the kids have not done the dishes that will just ignore that to doing that.

They gave us a tour of the house, and it's like very comfortable of that. The kids are hanging out doing their home work, plane video games, I mean, you know, doing stuff outside IT. It's just music, a place they've you've just settled in.

It's .

nothing remotely grand or Austin tatius, but IT feels so I got lots .

of chickens much to raise a grin on .

this really cute little farm.

It's more a farm than house. you.

There's this one moment where one of the kids just fires up this four whear atv thing. It's like kids eyes and he just goes flying and off around this field of the helmet on his bouncing around IT and and he just look IT looked like, so much fun. I was honestly jealous, like I want to be doing that.

That was great. Well, IT must feel good to have. You know, you ve got a house with the land and your kid can go take off on the .

forest wheeler, and yeah, not what the possibility when I was a kid for multiple of different reasons. So it's great that they're able to explore the things that they want to do. He's he's an engine guy. He's he's probably gna be an engineer smart at almost eleven and he's smarter. I am already.

Like gray said, you know, he was wounded in iraq and it's I don't know my experience sometimes it's it's hard for these folks to find A A peaceful spot. But this looks like he's peaceful spot to me.

When Chris first met the queens, they were about to lose all of that. During coffee. Becky and ray were among the millions of americans who needed the help of mortgage for parents.

Becky's mom died of coffee. Becky had to take extended leave from her job and then lost her job. SHE called up the company that now handles her mortgage payments, and they told her, yeah, you you can pause your payments.

So I am forty one years old and I do my research. I'm not just going to be like home Simon IT, I don't have to pay you call um I did my research. I looked into everything I call numerous numerous times um and every time I was told a forebearance is very simple IT is it's meant to last a short term up to a year and at the end of that year, whatever you did not pay tack on to the end.

right? SHE says that they told her that when I was time to start making her mortgage payments again, nothing would really change those. Those missed payments would move to the end of the loan. So so basically, if you missed a year of payments, SHE would still own those just you know like way weigh .

down the road the way. We also explained IT, IT would be a fairly simple process. You start make a payment again and you're done.

And to be clear, this is a very Normal way to restart payments after forebearance. And in the vast majority of homewood, ers who had trouble during covet were able to resume making their mortgage payments in some affordable way. But a lot of military veterans with va loans were not able to do that when the queens for barret's period was up, when they got their repayment options. That simple, affordable version of forebearance, where you just move the most payments to the back of the loan IT was nowhere to be found.

So they were told they could pay back all of their misplayed all at once, twenty two thousand hours, which they didn't have or they could do, is called the one modification. But rates had gone weigh up. I mean, mortgage rates had doubled. And that meant if they did a one, their payments, we're gonna go up by a huge amount.

They couldn't afford any of those options. And after arguing on the phone for months with a mortgage company saying this wasn't supposed to be the deal, they eventually realized there going to be facing for closure.

And when I tell you that my heart dropped and like my hands were shaking and honest, to god, I IT was scary. I was at work and I ended up um I ended up leaving and telling ray that you know I needed to talk to him before the kids got home from school because that was um not something that the kids needed to hear.

I mean, when I talk to ray and Becky queen, they were very close to for closure. I mean, start get letters in the we're going to for close in your house. You know, there's not much time left and they were scared and angry and confused.

And now at the point where we've got to figure out what you know, do we just do we give up and give in? Do we give up our property and and walk away? And this is supposed to be a program that your that have to help people in times of crisis not being able to ford their mortgage. So so you don't take their house from them. Like, I don't understand.

So what was happening? The clock was ticking on the queens home. Chris is starts calling, like everyone trying to get an answer to what exactly is going on here.

I I care exactly one thing. I do another, and I finally found a guy.

We will call this person a well positioned source. And Chris wound up talking to a bunch of people to confirm everything. But yes.

he found a guy. He's like, i'll tell you what I think going on. And when he explains IT, I, my god, god, like, like that makes sense. And if that really bad.

And what that well positioned source explained to Chris was essentially the va. Was being a big rich friend. Because you will recall the V A supposed to be a good, rich friend that vouches for veterans, you know, promises lenders.

Ultimately, the V A can take the hit if if someone stops paying their mortgage. Well, now, when tens of thousands of veterans took covet for parents, they pauses mortgage temporary. But IT was up to the va. To decide how those missed payments could eventually be paid back, like literally to decide what the options would be for those homeowners when they were ready to start paying again. Chris has this this useful way to picture the whole .

thing yeah I mean, I mean, you kind of think about this way, right? So you're pay in your mortgage on your house. It's like your .

drive along the freeway. But then crisis hits. You pause your payments, you pulling off the highway.

temporary? no. When it's time to start paying again, you need an on rap to get back onto the highway.

IT appeared that like long back by fanie friday or F A. Jay or most other loans in america, that is the on reps. Were working with, people were getting back on, but something didn't seem to be working with the .

V A lands yeah all those other you know rich friend entities, Fanny fredia, ta, that help people get mortgage. Well, they also got to determine their homeowners for parents repayment options. And those all seem to be going fine. What Chris is source was telling him was that sometime in october twenty, twenty two, the va.

Had stopped allowing the one repayment option that ray and Becky queen had thought they were getting, where they they pause their payments, restart the payments and the missed payments go all the way to the back of alone. IT. Was the V S one affordable on RAM?

The va. Basically blew up the the hymen, and people couldn't get back.

As Chris and quill dug into this, they discovered that they were as many as forty thousand veterans, now stuck, unable to get back onto that mortgage pain highway. Forty thousand veterans, they were on the path to losing their homes.

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the most striking things in all this, right? It's like veterans are supposed to have Better protections than everybody else. What we saw here was most other american homers had Better protections than veterans. IT was the veterans who were getting hurt at the end of this code for more thing.

Now again, the queens were about to lose their house. They say IT was scheduled for the next for closure auction. And in this next part of the story, Chris quill are just sort of running between the queens and the department of veterans affairs, just trying to figure out why the va blew up the on ramp. And so they go to the V, A.

And they ask, why did you do this? Why did you low up the one affordable option for veterans to start repaying their mortgage in? And q says they were told, quote.

we only had short term authority for that specific program during covet, and this wasn't part of our Normal authority. Does that mean anything? And I didn't mean anything, didn't make any sense to me.

Well, I mean, technically that means something right. They thought they had no choice but but to turn off this option. I mean, the thing that doesn't seem to add up or make any sense that it's like, you know, when we went to the va, there were six thousand veterans on the verge of foreclosure in the foreclosure process, a total of forty thousand vets headed that direction.

And you would think the va would be jumping up and down saying, like, we've got a serious problem. We have to shut down this thing that's going to strand all these veterans. We need help.

Congress, somebody please. And IT wasn't na, I mean, I was like IT seemed like somewhere in a dark room late at night. Somebody pulled the plug is bizarre.

Now the vi did seem to know there was a problem. To be fair. They said that they they were working on a new on ramp, if you will, a new way for people to start repaying again by sort of resetting the mortgage to a super low interest rate. But the va admitted to Chris quill that whole thing wasn't gonna be ready for months.

So IT was like, oh, there is A A raging fire, you know, basically and they have these fire trucks, but they don't have the wheel on them and the houses and and that's not all going to be built for like maybe six months from now. So all the houses were going to be burned down before the V. S rescue plan was like on the road I mean, it's just like, this is what this is what you .

know Chris and quill go back to ray queen, uh, explain all of this and ray is like, well, well, if the fix is coming, don't for close on us like, give the fire trucks time to show up.

Let us keep paying towards our regular mortgage between now and then. And then once the va has that fix, then we come back and we address this. The situation that seems like the adult, mature thing to do, not put a family through hell.

Chris will go back to the V, A, managed to get a sit down interview with the person in charge of the va loan program, john bell, and just tell him what ray said.

Why put family is through hell? He said, if we don't have to, you know if there's going to be .

helping a few months. I I have no I haven't said through this interview that, that you you know that we aren't expLoring all options at this at this point times because we certainly are. We owe IT to our veterans to make sure that we're giving them every opportunity to be able to stay in the home. In other words, still no help for ray and Becky and and any other veterans about to lose their houses. So this time crist goes to the airwaves.

an N, P, R. Investigation has found that thousands of U. S. Military service members and veterans could lose their homes through no fault of their own. As in pears Chris onal report.

Chris puts all of this reporting into a story includes the queens .

ray and showing us around their farm in battles. Bill oklahoman.

and and this is where things really start the kind of blow up.

So yeah, so this time we we do the story and four powerful U. S. Senators who had major committees fire off a letter to the va. And they were basically like WTF.

what is going on a WTF your own your own language. They are assume not.

The senator was not yeah, that's not technically what they rote.

but that was the spirit OK Chris q would later call up one of senators and tr john teter.

Let us go to your head. IT. Was your coverage that brought this to our attention then?

Tester is chairman of the senate veterans affairs committee. So you know, he's in charge of the committee that oversees the va.

The truth is we have little more access to him, the youtube. So we pound on him regularly and we're gona continue to pound on him.

So yeah, this this angry letter from tester and the other senators went off to the va.

And then by the end of the week, the va actually, you know, hats off, I mean, responded and stop for closures and every single veteran in the united states of amErica for six months.

So what does that mean for the queens in that moment?

Yeah, I mean, that mean suddenly everyone was safe for at least six months. There's a pause. No one's going to a get for closed, you know, even for, like I say, veteran stories have a lot of a political heft to them.

And politicians do like to be seen to be doing stuff for veterans. But this is the fastest i've ever seen a story. Have a real world effect in thirty years SHE just .

just heard a car so SHE just.

oh great. Here will wait to six.

Chris called the queens before news about the foreclosure moratorium .

had gotten out so um so uh, I I heard from the V A tonight, six o'clock on a friday um but they sent me a statement here and basically IT says that uh the V A is now going to stop for closing on anybody with A V A loan for the next six months. Well, they figure out this new program and get them up and running so people in your guy's situation can take advantage of you are not lose your house for no reason.

That's awesome.

yeah. So I just wanted to tell you guys that and then see like what your take is on, you know because I know every you guys have been stressed and it's been rough and you .

know yeah I mean, IT success, he had to get to this point to get them to do that.

But the fact that .

telling our story in getting some sort of justice for what's going on with our problems in everything else also helps. Forty thousand veterans. That's absolutely amazing to me.

okay? It's been a year since that phone call. After the break, everything is fixed.

No, no, no way.

No, no. that.

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So a foreclosure pause is useful, but the whole point of that was was to buy time for the department of veteran's affairs to roll out, you know, this permanent fix, this this program that IT was calling vasp.

So what vasp is, gonna is.

what does that stand for wasp?

And well.

in the veteran veterans, veterans of the transparent serving purchase program, purchase program.

let's call IT the bail up plan. Good plan. So the bailout plan, if you are a veteran who is facing for closure, the V A will go to the bank or more likely, the investors who hold your mortgage, and they will take the mortgage back from them.

put on its own portfolio of mortgage, like the va becomes a bank, and then the V A is the back. The V A can give you any interest strait at whats. So you could say, kenly, you got a two percent alone. It's going to be very affordable.

Problems solved. yeah. The ballot essentially gives the V A. The ability to take over the mortgage of veterans like the queens and then allow the queens to restart affordable mortgage payments, specifically at two point five percent for up to forty years. But IT lets the va offer a new on ramp back onto the old mortgage payment highway.

So I mean, IT is a good it's a good fix and and it's going to help thousands of people.

except we do have one final stop on this story because during their year of reporting, Chris and quill kept looking at this, this solution, this bailout, and saying, I think there is a huge hole in this V A fix, a big group of veterans getting left out here.

So, you know, the thing is, we we went to see the queen's north sa, but in the meantime, we heard from a another veteran who lives in elsa and IT didn't look like any of this.

We gona help her at all. So Chris .

quill went and.

Visited, hey.

how are you doing? Hi she's but he's going to up.

Okay, come on cigaret.

So we met natly Donald's son and her pitbull secret and she's an army vet um SHE search in military police officer. Now she's a school teacher and SHE bought her house with the va.

Helland in the one who is a 咖啡厅。

Sort of this .

little cottage place .

and it's really nice like think the walls are like very solid colors, which makes IT kind of stately and and it's need is a pen. I mean, he is he is just the inside is like everything has a place .

because when I coming here in spring and that blooming and like, oh my god, that's beautiful.

When SHE shown us around you, you can kind of hear how this house in the last few years of her life, which were rough, it's been a rough time, and it's all kind of tangled up together. And at one point, if she's like pointing out to the backyard.

I used to have a medal back there, like, that was so beautiful. But last bring, my mom had a heart deck, and then my grandpa passed like couple of tether that, and like metal, did not get the attention that I need to reserve. So this just made IT all down and going to start over.

So it's kind of clearing back. Neti had a very similar story to the queens darn covet. SHE had to stop working to take care of sick family, got four bearance on her vega loan, and then one day gets word that you cannot just start up payments again.

Like he thought, like the affordable on rap, SHE thought that he would have was gone. And just like the queens, SHE was instead presented with very bad on ramps back to repayment. And these will sound very familiar on rap number one, pay all of the money back at once, more than fifteen thousand dollars. In this case.

that's a lot of money. And SHE couldn't do IT, and they offers to this mod on rap.

Number two, take a loan modification again, basically a whole new mortgage, but interest rates had gone way up.

And then suddenly she's owing twelve fifty a month instead of eight hundred dollars a month. And that's just that's a big jump.

And to be clear here, this is all happening before the foreclosures pause before that morritt. Um so so these were the only two options, the only two on rams ferati to resume payments and keeper house netley's mortgage company gives her a deadline to decide whether or not to to take on those higher payments.

Finally, the day is coming gone and they're calling me, they are calling me every day and and my mom, the phone with the grass, I was in bed and and I had the stuff spread out in front of me and SHE said, you have to sign a, you know, you have to otherwise we're going to forecast on your on your home and and .

i'm .

i'm telling her, again, it's not sustainable. I can do this. I don't know what to do.

So unlike the queens, natly decided to try somehow to make this loan modification thing work. Suddenly her monthly payments were fifty percent higher, and he picked up every spare piece of work that he could find.

Tuesday I was doing in one hundred school program. Uh, thursday I was doing one time for school program. And wednesay, I was doing another one.

And so i'm just doing all this stuff so that I can make all this money so I can try to pay my house payment. I mean, I just I was just just a survival mode. I just went to work.

I came home. I shut down. I just, I, I can, I can do this anymore.

but he is still somehow doing IT. And ironically, IT IT is the fact that nataly decided to try and make this higher mortgage thing work. That is the problem because the bailout, the vast program IT, is only for people who have stopped making payments and are headed towards for closure, which put someone like natly in in a rough spot.

I mean, so yeah I mean, what what could happen if if shy strategically default, it's called you just decide i'm going to stop paying my mortgage so i'll get behind and then i'll qualify for the help. But IT, it's like really like you're gonna put people through that when you could just give them access to the program.

Yes, strategic default would give some people in native ly situation access to the bailout program, but IT would recognize oy's credit and and her ability to get alone anytime soon. And so she's still hosting, still scraping together those way higher monthly payments.

Oh, no. You know, if express comforts with the V A secretary mcDonald, would you want to tell him? I like, what would you want to say?

I just say, please help me to help us to maybe all these other people. It's fixed for them, and i'm so happy for them, but I want, I need that for myself too. I want some sembLance of what my life was before I I did this.

Chris and quill have been trying to figure out how many natives there are out there, people who will not be helped by the big bailout plan, but probably still need help. So they asked the va. A, did not get any answer.

And then they foil out a bunch of documents. They, they got a bunch of documents through the freedom of information act. And those appear to show that about three thousand veterans took a loan modification and ended up paying at least twenty five percent more per month and and some paid a lot more. At least a thousand vets ended up with monthly payments that were fifty percent higher than before, just like netty.

Yeah, I mean, this is not the way for barret's plans are supposed to work. I in the whole point is someone has to be paying for a bit. They need to get back on tracks. So you give them an affordable way to start paying again, but your payments going up by fifty percent or more, obviously something broken, you know. But so far, there not in any help from the vata to make IT right.

The department of veterans affairs holds these press conferences every month with with, like the person in charge, the head of the va, secretary Dennis mcDonald, and for the last .

year afternoon. Hey, thanks. Can you hear me? We basically .

every month we're .

going to Chris, good afternoon, Chris.

thanks. Close on vacation. So you guys stuck with me.

Chris quill have been showing up in asking about va mortgages.

And I I think you know that I want to ask you about .

the s yeah. So thanks so much. I'm glad that you asked about this question. We anticipated you might um not sure why we thought that at .

the most recent of these press conferences.

Thanks then will go to a quill. Thanks very much. Um this week I was hoa meeting with a former M P. Who the nine, we will got .

the chance to ask the V A secretary natal Donaldson's specific question .

so SHE wants to know, uh, what are you going to do to help veterans in her situation who were as they consider duped into taking this a verely barret which had no one rent back onto a som cy and uh and the the current fix doesn't seem to affect them yes.

Well, thanks very much uh, for the question quill. Uh, we are are working all that data through. I don't have an an answer on your question about similarly situated veterans and will you will be among the first to know, but I don't have any news for you on that right now.

Yeah the va. Finally did give us a clear answer in a statement and IT doesn't directly address daily, but they said that they don't have the authority they say to include people like madly in the bailout plan. The bailout plan they are only allowed to use to take over someone as mortgage if they have default IT on IT um and daily y hasn't default IT.

So they did say, however, the people like that, they did say that veterans who in trouble should reach out to the V. A. For help.

I mean, like to be clear, the V. A did help a lot of veterans through this poll forbearance thing before I went off the rails and before the onp got loan up. And when we learned about ryan, Becky, queen and other veterans in their situation, and we expose this whole thing, they acted very quickly to stop for closures on veterans all across the country.

know. So I mean, they seem to be very sincere about wanting to do the right thing and help that. But since then IT IT just, you know, we keep asking them about people legally who ended up in in these like brutally more expensive mortgages. This group of people like her in adv is saying, well, we don't have the authority to include them in our rescue plan.

That seems like the exact same explanation that they had when we asked them, why did you blow up the on rope in the first place? And it's like, what can you just ask for the authority? I can't you find a work around? I mean, there are still thousands of veterans who got hurt here. They didn't do anything wrong. But as IT stands right now, you know, they are excluded from this rescue plan.

As of this recording, the bailout plane, vasp has just started to be rolled out.

Today's epo de was produced by James sneed IT was edited by meg cramer and fact checked by Daniel sulman, engineering by scene of rato out goldmark is planet moneys executive producer. And a very, very special things this week to Robert benn, kosta and bob little. I'm canny alone. This is N. P. R. Thanks for listening.

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