The veteran loan calamity

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ray and Becky Queen live in rural Oklahoma with their kids (and chickens). The Queens were able to buy that home with a VA loan because of Ray's service in the Army. During COVID, the Queens – like millions of other Americans – needed help from emergency forbearance. They were told they could pause home payments for up to a year and then pick up again making affordable mortgage payments with no problems.

That's what happened for most American homeowners who took forbearance. But not for tens of thousands of military veterans like Ray Queen.

On today's show, we follow two reporters' journey to figure out what went wrong with the VA's loan forbearance program. How did something meant to help vets keep their houses during COVID end up stranding tens of thousands of them on the brink of foreclosure? And, once the error was spotted, did the government do enough to make things right?

Today's episode was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Meg Cramer. And fact-checked by Dania Suleman. Engineering by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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1:33.2	This gorgeous farm land out here.
1:35.5	Yeah, it's nice.
1:41.3	Picture, a Jeep bouncing along a dirt road in rural Oklahoma.
1:42.4	Is that their house?
1:44.5	What does it say?
1:45.6	It's on the right or the left?
1:47.2	I think it's on the left.
1:51.9	These are two of my colleagues, NPR reporters Quill Lawrence and Chris Arnold, and they're pulling up to a house.
1:53.4	Is that right?
1:54.3	I think that's right, yeah.
	...

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