Help Us Save Our Family's Home in San Jacinto

Hi everyone. I was medically retired from the Army in August 2024 after 11 years of service, and my family — my wife, our four kids, two dogs, and I — are fighting to keep our home in San Jacinto.

We're $15,250.28 behind on our mortgage, and we need help before our current forbearance protection runs out in October.

When I retired, my VA benefits didn't start until October 2024, so my mortgage went into forbearance. I started school that November to bring in income, and landed a full-time job by January 2025. We thought a VA program called VASP would help — it got scrapped. Since then I've requested forbearance extensions every three months and paid as much extra as I could every month, but the debt kept growing:

Property taxes we couldn't cover got rolled into our loan, pushing our monthly payment from about $3,300 to $3,800.

An unforeseen escrow shortfall added even more to the balance.

A few weeks ago, the VA announced a new partial payment plan that could help fix this. I called my lender right away — they were hesitant. I called the VA for guidance — I was told lenders have until November 28, 2026, to even update their systems for it.

Our forbearance is set to expire in October. We're hoping to either get accepted into the VA's new partial payment plan or get another extension, but neither is guaranteed, and we don't want to wait until the last possible moment to find out. We don't want this to turn into something more serious than it already is. We're currently three payments behind (April, May, June), and that keeps climbing while we wait on the system to catch up.

I just need to get back to zero. With my current income, I can comfortably make our regular monthly mortgage payments moving forward—we just simply cannot recoup the past-due balance from the months we fell behind. That is why the VA's new partial claim program is our lifeline. If we can get accepted and make three normal payments during a trial period, the VA will cover the overdue amount and move it to a zero-interest subordinate lien that we do not have to pay until the home is sold or paid off.

I'm working full-time in university outreach and just finished my Master's degree to try to increase our income faster. We are not asking because we've given up — we're asking because we've done everything we can, and the system is moving slower than our mortgage clock.

Any donation, however small, and any share of this page, brings us closer to keeping our kids in their home. Thank you for reading this far.