Following World War II, the G.I. Bill helped build the strongest middle class the world had ever seen. It gave ordinary Americans a path to homeownership and a real stake in the country they loved. Veterans and their families built communities, raised children, and strengthened schools and houses of worship. They fueled the growth of great cities, colleges, research universities, and a technological boom unlike anything the world had seen. Now that is ending.
Today, few young Americans can afford to buy homes. Trump’s answer? Fifty-year mortgages. I’m not a math whiz, but with the median age of buying a home at 40, that means no American will live to actually own their home outright.
But this is all by design.
The clearest example of where American homeownership is heading is the foreclosure disaster now unfolding for veterans and their families. Since the Trump administration killed the VA Servicing Purchase program, or VASP, more than 10,000 veterans lost their homes to foreclosure sales. Roughly 90,000 more were behind on their mortgages or already in the foreclosure process. It’s unclear how many veterans would have been able to keep their home if VASP was left in place. The VA is quick to point out that there are “other reasons for foreclosures other than the absence of VASP,” and there certainly are, but that doesn’t mean that shutting down the program didn’t cause veterans to lose their homes.
This was not some unforeseen accident. The mortgage industry warned that closing VASP without a ready replacement would lead directly to foreclosure. The administration did it anyway. But no matter how you slice it, you will pay for this idiotic move. VA loans are backed and guaranteed by American taxpayers.
What makes this especially cruel is that many of these veterans were not beyond saving. Some had enough disability compensation or other income to stay in their homes if they had been offered a workable repayment structure. Under VASP, thousands of struggling borrowers were able to get sustainable, low-cost mortgages. But the door was slammed shut with little warning, leaving veteran families stranded between bureaucratic failure and financial ruin.
This is what anti-veteran policy looks like in real life. It is not always loud. It does not always arrive wrapped in “suckers and losers.” Sometimes it looks like paperwork, delay, indifference, and a government deciding that veterans can absorb one more hit.
It looks like monthly mortgage payments climbing hundreds of dollars higher while groceries, gas, and everything else also cost more. Trumpenomics 101.
And this disaster is unfolding inside a broader housing market that is already crushing ordinary Americans, especially younger families and first-time buyers. The share of first-time homebuyers has fallen to a historic low of just 21 percent. Their median age is now 40, another record. Meanwhile, repeat buyers are older, wealthier, and more likely to make large down payments or pay in cash. In other words, the housing ladder is being pulled up, and veterans are being told to climb anyway.
That matters because homeownership has long been one of the main ways veterans build wealth after service. It literally built the America we all enjoy today. Delay that by a decade, and you do not just postpone a purchase. You strip away years of equity, stability, and opportunity. Even the National Association of Realtors noted that delaying homeownership until age 40 instead of 30 can mean losing roughly $150,000 in equity on a typical starter home. For a veteran trying to move from service into civilian life, that is not an abstract statistic. That is the difference between them keeping and paying off a home before they age out of the workforce.
Trump’s answer to this crisis is not to restore strong protections for VA borrowers or expand affordable housing. Instead, his administration floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage for all Americans. As stated, that is not a solution. It is a trap. Yes, it may shave a little off a monthly payment in the short term. But over time it would bury borrowers in vastly more interest and slow the building of equity to a crawl. One analysis found that on a $400,000 home, a 50-year mortgage could save about $250 a month but cost more than $378,000 extra in total interest compared with a standard 30-year loan. That is not restoring the American Dream. That is refinancing it into permanent indebtedness.
One of the greatest attributes of the G.I. Bill and the classic American homeownership model was that a mortgage could be paid off in 15 to 25 years. Allowing for second mortgages to pay for equity building, college funds, debt consolidation, vacation homes, et cetera. Unfortunately we will never see such an affluent middle class in America again. No, really.
Giant firms like Blackstone continue expanding across the rental market, buying up apartments, student housing, mobile home parks, and single-family homes in growth markets across the country. The result is a housing system where large investors scale up, rents keep rising, and ordinary families are told to accept smaller futures. Veterans are supposed to compete in that market after losing the very safeguards designed to honor their service.
Trump built his career and wealth on the same tactics that Blackstone uses. He was far less successful, but it shows that he is a true believer in mass property ownership for the few, not the many.
A country that can spend endlessly on war but will not protect veterans from losing their homes on the other side of war is not just morally corrupt, it is a travesty.
Veterans were promised a path to the middle class.
Instead they are on a path to homelessness.
