As part of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Homeowners Assistance Program (HAP) was expanded to include military personnel who are PCSing and owe more on their home than current market value. The HAP program allows military members to sell their homes at fair market value and HAP covers 90% of your loss. This sounds like a great benefit. However, the program is not equally distributed among everyone nor is it equal between the three HAP offices. In April of 2010, I began the application process through HAP (Savanna, GA office) while I was deployed to Iraq so that I could have my family move with me to my new duty station upon my return. I was accepted into the program and in Aug 2010 we had a buyer and were getting ready to set a closing date. Then it all ended.
The day before my packet was to move forward to the dispersal, HAP came back and said that I no longer qualified since I purchased my home while in a Title 32 State Active Guard Reserve (AGR) status. Although I am currently Title 10, being transferred in support of our Nations defense, I am excluded from a program established to assist military families stay together. I filed an appeal that went from HAP up through Army Corps of Engineers to the Office Secretary of Defense. Following another nine-month wait living apart from my family and my home losing another $25,000 in value I was again denied assistance. To make this even more frustrating, other soldiers in the same situation I am in, submitted their applications through Texas office and received compensation without question.
We are told that the Army is one big family, yet there are policies in place that discriminate between active and reserve personnel. For the past 26 years, I have served in National Guard, traditional and AGR as well as regular Army. Now, when I truly need the assistance from the Army, I am told I’m a new accession on Active Duty and left to deal with the situation on my own. This leaves me with the less than favorable options of living separated from my family for the next 4 years until I retire or having the bank foreclose on my home. Although we are briefed that we are One Army fighting to protect the freedoms of the United States, it is apparent that National Guard AGR soldiers are not considered the same as our Regular Army counterparts.