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Operation Homefront Neighborhoods
The Key to Long-Term Help for Wounded Warriors is Housing
There are currently more homeless Vietnam veterans than there were service members killed in that war. So how do we prevent a new generation of homeless vets? In our daily work providing emergency assistance to wounded warriors and their families, we have found that a combination of mental health issues (including long-term PTSD) and bankruptcy resulting from the 18-month bureaucratic outprocessing leads veterans down the path toward homelessness. Conversely, we know home and financial stability and proximity to health care over a lifetime is the key to long-term success for disabled veterans.
Operation Homefront strongly believes that permanent, long-term housing is the key to preventing a new generation of warriors from becoming homeless. Our goal is to create entire neighborhoods of wounded warriors and their families:
- Affordable and comfortable homes where their children can grow up
- Neighbors who share common experiences and protect each other from inevitable down times
- Proximity to health and other VA services
- Proximity to large communities where jobs and job placement services are plentiful
The key to long-term housing for wounded warriors are:
- Mortgages – Wounded warriors may have bad credit as a result of their finances dissipating during the 18-month recovery and bureaucratic outprocess. However, once they have obtained their VA benefits, they become a good risk with steady income for life. Wounded warriors also are likely to have occasional lapses in health over their lifetimes, especially in the early stages of ‘normalcy’, so flexibility is needed. A way must be found so that the home is not foreclosed upon during these lapses while still protecting the lender from risk.
Operation Homefront proposes the creation of a new program under the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) for wounded warriors that helps prevent foreclosure and creates a work-out policy for private mortgage lenders. In the early stages of the war, the FHA (via parent Department of Housing and Urban Development) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Defense Department to prevent foreclosure on homes of guardsman and reservists who missed payments after being called to duty. The program was designed to protect guardsmen and reservists, whose income had significantly decreased after being called up, from losing their homes. We should extend the program to cover wounded warriors who may have missed mortgage payments after being wounded, even over the course of their lives.
The logistics of handling missed payments can be similar to the FHA’s current ‘workout’ arrangement with subprime lenders. When a subprime mortgage holder begins to miss payments after his rates increased from the original subprime rates, the FHA assumes the loan from the private lender and grandfathers the original subprime rate. The mortgage holder’s credit is not affected by any missed payments after the interest rate increased. With wounded warriors, a similar workout can be arranged whereby the FHA assumes a mortgage after the warrior has missed payments that would otherwise cause foreclosure. So long as the wounded warrior or his family provides a viable medical reason (including mental health issues) within one year of the missed payments, the home will not be foreclosed and the wounded warrior may continue with the original payment and rate. Private lenders will also continue to lend to wounded warriors because they are not forced to accept late payments. Because wounded warrior receives regular income, the FHA may still require him to pay past due payments – meaning there should be virtually no cost to the government for this ‘workout’ program and arguably a net benefit by ensuring wounded warriors are in a stable environment.
- Homes – Operation Homefront seeks to create neighborhoods of wounded warrior families nestled inside large subdivisions of affordable and comfortable housing. The downturn in the housing market is a good opportunity to partner with large homebuilders and obtain commitments for tracts of discounted housing from the huge inventories of housing. Homebuilders may even offer inexpensive upgrades, such as wheelchair ramps, which would further benefit and attract wounded homebuyers. The program would be heavily marketed to build goodwill for the homebuilders who choose to support wounded warrior families.
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