Last year, Derrick Van Orden gutted a VA home loan program that helped 33,000 veterans afford their mortgages. Now, “thousands of military veterans with VA-backed mortgages have been hit with higher interest rates and monthly payments.”

Thousands of veterans have seen their monthly payments increase by at least $500, and more than 700 have seen payment increases of $1,000 or more per month.



NPR spoke with a veteran who is now paying $1,181 more per month due to the end of the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase (VASP) program. 

Derrick Van Orden “led the call to wind down the VASP program” – despite being warned that “vets would be left with far worse options than other American homeowners” – and “did not respond to requests for comment” about the fact that veterans are now paying hundreds to thousands more per month.And the so-called “replacement” program Van Orden is touting? There’s been a gap left because the VA took more than a year to design and announce it, the mortgage industry was given another 6 months to implement it, and “most mortgage companies still do not offer it.” Meaning that in that gap, “thousands of veterans got modified loans with higher interest rates and payments” and the new program “won’t do anything to help those vets — they’ll remain stuck in those modified loans.”

DCCC Spokesperson Katie Smith:
“Derrick Van Orden killed a VA home loan program, and now veterans are literally paying the price of hundreds to thousands of dollars more per month for their mortgages. Van Orden was warned this would happen, and didn’t care – he put Washington politics first and Wisconsin veterans are suffering.” 

Read the reporting for yourself:

NPR: Trump’s VA killed a home loan program. Thousands of veterans are paying the price

– Thousands of military veterans with VA-backed mortgages have been hit with higher interest rates and monthly payments since last year, when the Trump administration shut down a low-interest program designed to help them.

– Among veterans who had their loans modified after a financial hardship, more than 15,000 saw their monthly payments increase by at least $150, according to an NPR investigation that obtained previously unreported data from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

– More than 700 veterans suffered payment increases of $1,000 or more

 – Veterans like Scott Boyd are literally paying the price.
 
– He started out in the infantry and saw combat. Later, Boyd worked in Army intelligence in some dangerous places. When he got out in 2002, he had skills that set him up for a career in tech. In 2021, he bought a house near Columbus, Ohio, using a VA home loan. Like other buyers at the time, he got a nice low-interest rate. “I felt very blessed,” he said.

– But a few years later, Boyd hit a crisis: He lost his job in a mass layoff, and he said his time in combat came back to haunt him in the form of PTSD. He checked himself into the Dayton VA hospital for treatment but fell behind on his mortgage.

– Boyd’s lender told him that he didn’t have to worry because the VA had a loan forbearance program that would allow him to pause his payments and provide him with an affordable way to catch up after.
 
– “I later found out that wasn’t true,” he said.

– It wasn’t true because the Trump administration then shut down a key part of the VA’s home loan program. It was called the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase (VASP) program. Without it, vets like Boyd were stranded with no option but a much-higher-cost modified home loan at today’s higher interest rates.

– In Boyd’s case, he is now stuck paying $1,181 more — every month.

– “This is outrageous,” said Boyd. “I remember just thinking to myself, ‘This is just so broken.'”

– Before it was shut down, the VASP program was helping tens of thousands of veterans who had fallen behind on their home loan payments by rolling those missed payments into a new mortgage with a low 2.5% interest rate. That made the program a lifeline for vets in today’s higher-interest-rate environment.

– And Boyd said his mortgage company had been telling him that he too could use VASP when he was able to resume paying his mortgage.

– “If the Biden version of VASP was allowed to continue, I fear that the home loan will not exist in the future for my fellow veterans,” said Van Orden during a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on March 11, 2025.

– But at the same hearing, as well as in letters to Congress and press releases, the mortgage industry and housing groups explicitly warned the Trump administration not to kill the program without first creating another viable option for vets. They said if the VA shut down the program before standing up a replacement, vets would be left with far worse options than other American homeowners. With interest rates up around 7%, they warned that the only option left would be a modified loan at the current higher rates, which would result in foreclosures for those who couldn’t afford the higher payments. And that’s exactly what has been happening.

– “This was a foreseeable outcome of abruptly ending a program without a replacement in place,” said Matthew Douglas, of the Housing Policy Council. He represents the largest mortgage companies in the U.S. and was among those warning the VA not to kill VASP. Asked about NPR’s findings, he said, “It’s a mathematical certainty that borrowers are going to have those kind of shocking payment increases.” 
 Despite the warnings, the Trump administration ended the VASP program on May 1, 2025 — apparently in coordination with House Republicans, who announced the move before the Department of Veterans Affairs did, even though VASP was ended administratively, with no vote from Congress.

– “We — along with many of our colleagues — had serious concerns about the impact VASP would have on not only the future of VA’s home loan program, but the mortgage lending business as a whole.Today, the Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA’s VASP program,” Bost and Van Orden said in a joint press release at the time.

– At the same time Van Orden was calling for VASP to be scuttled, he had written a bill to replace it with a new VA Partial Claim Program (PCP). 

– But after ending VASP, it took the VA more than 13 months to design and announce the details of the new program, which it did in June of this year. And the industry was then given another 180 days to implement it. Most mortgage companies still do not offer it.

– In that gap, thousands of veterans got modified loans with higher interest rates and payments. The VA’s new PCP program won’t do anything to help those vets — they’ll remain stuck in those modified loans.

– Industry groups say raising a struggling homeowner’s payment makes it more likely for them to redefault and face foreclosure. Foreclosures on VA loans rose to a 10-year high after VASP was killed, according to industry data. Experts warned in a congressional roundtable in September that time is running out for the government to help these vets or a wave of foreclosures is still to come.
For Immediate Release: October 30, 2026
CONTACT: Katie Smith | (713) 299-0231

PAID FOR BY DCCC. DCCC.ORG. NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.