She served her country. Trump’s VA betrayed her.

One family’s story of being left out in the cold by this administration.

Shante and Mark Benfatto feel abandoned and betrayed by this administration.

Shante Benfatto served six-and-a-half years in the Army and deployed to Afghanistan. She was honorably discharged on a medical retirement, and is a 100 percent disabled veteran. She is proud of her service, and she and her husband Mark sought to build a life for themselves in Tennessee after that service ended. They bought a house, with the mortgage loan backed by the Veterans Administration (VA).

What they didn’t expect was to be caught up in a never-ending bureaucratic nightmare that seems designed to keep veteran homeowners in limbo, with the risk of losing their home, savings—or both. But that’s exactly what happened.

This all starts with a program called VA Servicing Purchase program, or VASP, which is a rescue plan that’s designed to help veterans avoid foreclosure. The program made headlines when the Trump administration abruptly shut it down on May 1, 2025. That closure left many families—including the Benfattos—without options for keeping their homes.

Per an in-depth NPR report on the situation:

[Shante] and her husband fell behind on payments when he was between jobs. They say they tried for months to get into the VASP program but that their lender didn’t get all their paperwork together before the VA suddenly shut it down.

After receiving letters threatening foreclosure, the Benfattos reluctantly accepted a new modified mortgage with payments about $300 a month higher than their original loan.

“We’re paying late because we can’t afford to pay the extra money until the end of the month, until she gets her disability,” said her husband, Mark. The late fees add an additional $105 to their monthly mortgage bill.

Let’s call this what it is: a direct Trump administration action that leaves veterans like the Benfattos “out to dry,” and without any good options for how to proceed. Shante put on the uniform and served her country without any expectation for special treatment. But she at least believed in the promise that, in return for that service, her country would have her back when she needed it. This administration broke that promise.

“Honestly, I just—I was baffled,” she said, tearing up. “I mean, why would you start to take care of veterans and then just stop? Like, make it make sense.”

“We felt like the system just failed us,” Mark, her husband, said. “I mean, veterans, they do serve the country and provide us our freedom, and this is how they get treated?”

It’s not like this administration wasn’t warned. Back in March 2025, Elizabeth Balce—a Mortgage Bankers Association expert—testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs about exactly what would happen to families like the Benfattos if the VASP program were discontinued: “Foreclosure, period. That’s really where it’s really going to come to.” Sadly, Balce was exactly right.

The Benfattos feel especially betrayed because, at the same time as they are navigating this man-made crisis, they’re watching the Trump administration wage war on Iran. The optics are pretty clear:

The US government has the money to go to war against a foreign country (a war that costs $1 billion per day), but no money to take care of the veterans who have already fought for America. And what will happen to those veterans who return from this Iran war, including the hundreds who have already been wounded in action?

Mark had some direct advice for the administration: “Stop blowing up fricking Iran, man. That’s costing us hundreds of millions of dollars a day, if not more. This is something you’re not going to win. You’ve got to take care of your own home first.”

This administration isn’t doing that, and families like the Benfattos are suffering the consequences. But despite it all, they still refuse to give into complacency or despair. Mark said: “My wife’s a veteran. We’re not going to give up. We fight. That’s what we do. And if we get injured, guess what? We get right back up.”

These are exactly the kind of people who deserve a helping hand. Instead, our government is leaving them out in the cold.

Home of the Brave exists to show Americans the real-world consequences of this administration’s policies, and to highlight what bravery looks like in defense of American democracy.