Washington Reporter: Op-Ed: Rep. Pat Harrigan and John Gallina: Cutting the red tape between disabled veterans and a safe home is essential

Contact: Lexi Kranich (814) 380-4408

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Housing affordability just became harder for millions of Americans. With the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reaching 7 percent, buying a home is becoming more expensive, but for many disabled veterans, the challenge is even more basic: whether the home they already have can safely meet their needs.

As veterans ourselves, we regularly hear from men and women living in homes that no longer accommodate their physical needs. For someone aging with a service-connected injury, remaining independent can depend on something as basic as a ramp, widened doorway or accessible shower.

By 2021, about half of disabled veteran renters were spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent, while nearly three in ten spent more than half. Yet for some veterans, the housing market was not the only thing working against them. Federal policy was too.

Many state and local home-repair programs rely on HUD’s Community Development Block Grant program, or CDBG. Until this year, VA service-connected disability compensation could be counted when calculating income for eligibility.

The result made little sense. A veteran could receive compensation because he was disabled serving this country, then have that same compensation used to disqualify him from assistance modifying his home around that disability.

We see problems like this from two different vantage points.

Purple Heart Homes sees them veteran by veteran, working inside homes where a poorly written rule can determine whether someone gets the ramp, bathroom or other modification needed to remain independent. The congressional side sees the same failures written into federal programs, where one rule can quietly affect thousands of veterans across the country.

That is why veterans policy has been a major focus of the work coming out of North Carolina’s 10th District. That work has included introducing legislation to strengthen oversight of the VA’s overseas health care program, introducing the COMPASS Act to protect military families during PCS moves, co-leading legislation to improve housing and financial counseling for servicemembers and transitioning veterans, and helping advance the Fort Bragg land transfer needed for North Carolina to build a new State Veterans Home.

The issues are different, but the approach is the same: find where government is failing the people who served, understand exactly why it is failing, and fix the policy behind it.

That approach mattered here because Purple Heart Homes had spent eight years documenting the problem.

Using VA data covering more than 1 million veterans with service-connected disability ratings of 50 percent or higher, Purple Heart Homes identified 35,516 veterans whose disability compensation alone exceeded 80 percent of their state’s median income, even if they earned nothing else. More than three-quarters have a 100 percent service-connected disability rating.

Some of the veterans living with the most serious service-connected disabilities could therefore be denied assistance precisely because of the benefits they earned for those disabilities.

And North Carolina’s 10th District had a unique view of both sides of that problem. Purple Heart Homes, founded and headquartered in Statesville, had the experience and data showing what veterans were encountering at home. Congress had the ability to address the federal rule behind it.

The Disabled Veterans Housing Support Act, sponsored by Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas, received bipartisan support and was signed into law on Jan. 20. It now requires states, local governments and tribes to exclude VA service-connected disability compensation when determining eligibility under CDBG. It also directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine whether the same problem exists elsewhere across HUD.

Now the law has to work where it matters.

Housing agencies and nonprofit providers need to update their eligibility policies, and veterans previously told their disability compensation put them above an income limit should know the rules have changed. If the GAO finds the same mistake elsewhere, Congress should fix it there too.

For those of us who served, this gets to a larger point about veterans policy. Creating a benefit is not enough if another part of government makes it harder for a veteran to use it.

Disability compensation reflects a cost a veteran continues to carry because he or she served this country. It should never become another obstacle to receiving help.

Purple Heart Homes can see where policy fails when it reaches a veteran’s front door. Congress can trace that failure back to federal law and remove it. Bringing those two perspectives together is how a bureaucratic problem becomes a practical solution.

For disabled veterans, that solution can be as simple, and as important, as being able to remain safely in the place they call home.

Rep. Pat Harrigan represents North Carolina’s 10th District and serves on the House Armed Services Committee. A West Point graduate and former Green Beret, he served in Afghanistan and was awarded two Bronze Stars. John Gallina is Co-Founder and CEO of Purple Heart Homes, a nonprofit organization based in Statesville, North Carolina, providing safe, barrier-free housing solutions for qualified veterans.