[HN Gopher] 1000s of veterans face foreclosure and it's not thei...
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       1000s of veterans face foreclosure and it's not their fault. The VA
       could help
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2023-11-11 15:46 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (text.npr.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (text.npr.org)
        
       | thegrim22 wrote:
       | I'm trying to figure out what this article is saying, how people
       | could be losing their homes but it not being "their fault". The
       | best I can understand is that these people had their loan
       | payments deferred for COVID, and now their payments are resuming,
       | but interest rates have risen in the meantime, and so now when
       | their payments are resuming they have to pay more because of
       | higher interest rates, and they can't afford to pay it. So ...
       | they took out a loan with a variable interest rate, they can't
       | pay the loan now that interest rates have changed, and so it's
       | "not their fault" because these programs refused to keep allowing
       | them to defer payments?
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | They were allowed to defer payments, placing those at the end
         | of the "queue" of payments. Then the program was cancelled
         | before the extended terms of the loans.
         | 
         | > In October 2022, the Department of Veterans Affairs ended the
         | so-called Partial Claim Payment program, or PCP, that enabled
         | homeowners to do that. This happened even though the mortgage
         | industry, housing advocates and veterans groups all warned the
         | VA not to end the program, saying thousands of homeowners
         | needed to catch up on missed payments. Interest rates had risen
         | so much that many couldn't afford to refinance or get back on
         | track any other way.
        
         | fragmede wrote:
         | it doesn't sound like they had an ARM though. it sounds like
         | the VA program ending means the borrowers owe the payments they
         | missed during covid as a lump sum
        
       | LiquidPolymer wrote:
       | My spouse receives union publication and she showed me a similar
       | story that had me scratching my head. The story was about a union
       | member who was losing his home through foreclosure and he and his
       | wife had nowhere to go. Reading a bit further revealed that the
       | union worker had stopped paying his mortgage because of a
       | misunderstanding about supplemental insurance that he thought
       | covered his mortgage. He ignored the many notices of foreclosure,
       | ignored the court summons, and yet was surprised when he and his
       | wife were evicted. The quotes from the homeowner revealed a
       | tenuous grasp of reality. I felt really bad for the guy but he
       | clearly made a series of very bad decisions. The article headline
       | suggested he was a victim of greedy banks, yet the reporting was
       | clearly pointing to a deeper problem.
       | 
       | The writer appeared to be taking for granted the idea that
       | housing is a right not a privilege. It was a weird take.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-11 23:02 UTC)