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Veterans Trust Fund — Fifteen Named Bills It Can Pay, Including Rent Application Fees

A state trust fund pays for a defined list of things on a majority vote of the veterans commission: travel to follow-up medical care, retraining, hearing, dental, vision and prescriptions, counselling, durable medical equipment, and emergency vehicle repair, housing repair or temporary housing. One-time homelessness prevention is capped at $1,000.

Verified August 22, 2026

What this benefit is

What it's worth: A named bill paid — with homelessness prevention capped at $1,000 once per recipient

Only one figure is written into the statute: the one-time homelessness prevention payment, which may not exceed $1,000 per recipient. Everything else on the list is uncapped in the statute and bounded in practice by what the fund can spend that year.
What the fund can spend is not a fixed appropriation. Below a $50 million balance it spends interest and earnings plus the first $500,000 transferred from the lottery fund; above that balance the formula changes again. Money left unencumbered at year end reverts.
No dollar range is claimed because the department publishes no schedule of award sizes.

Who is entitled to it

You served.
The statute names the spouses and dependents of veterans alongside the veteran.
You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

1Read the list before applying, because the fund can only pay what is on it: travel for wounded veterans and their spouses to follow-up medical care; job training or college tuition for retraining; unemployment assistance during unemployment caused by prolonged illness or disability resulting from military service; durable medical equipment or services that let a veteran stay at home; hearing, dental, vision or prescription drugs; individual or family counselling; family support groups and programmes for military children; honour guard services; ambulance and emergency room expenses for a veteran who is a trauma patient; emergency vehicle repair, housing repair or temporary housing; establishing whether a minor child is a dependant of a deceased veteran; initial screening for a service-connected traumatic brain injury; survivor outreach; rental application fees for a veteran who is homeless as federal law defines it; and one-time homelessness prevention up to $1,000.
2Two items on that list are quietly unusual. Rental APPLICATION FEES are payable for a homeless veteran — a small sum that blocks a tenancy — and the traumatic brain injury screening is the one purpose the statute says carries NO income limit.
3The traumatic brain injury screening is also payable only where no other federal or state programme, private insurance or managed care organisation will pay. Ask about that route before spending your own money on it.
4Go through the county veterans service officer. Iowa Code forbids the state department and county offices from charging for any service, so the help costs nothing, and the officer files these constantly.
5The commission decides by majority vote of its membership. That is a meeting, not a counter decision, so expect the timetable to follow the commission calendar.
6The fund may not be used to supplant funding available from another source, so be ready to show what else you tried.

Form: Veterans trust fund application
File with: Your county veterans service officer, who files it with the state department of veterans affairs
Documents you will need: dd214
Confirm with the office: We have not verified the renewal behaviour.

CorrectionThis is commonly described as an emergency fund for veterans in crisis, which makes it sound open-ended. It is not: §35A.13(8) is a closed list of fifteen purposes, and a bill that does not fall inside one of them cannot be paid however urgent it is.

CorrectionThe department’s own summary of what the fund currently pays is NARROWER than the statute. It names unemployment or underemployment assistance, vision, hearing and dental care, durable medical equipment, prescription drugs, counselling and substance abuse services, vehicle repairs, housing repair and transitional housing. Honour guard services, trauma ambulance costs, rental application fees and the $1,000 homelessness payment are all in the statute but absent from that summary — so ask, rather than assuming a statutory purpose is live this year.

Worth knowingA separate war orphans educational assistance account sits inside the same trust fund and is ring-fenced from it. A child of a person who died in active federal service on or after 11 September 2001 may receive tuition up to the highest resident undergraduate rate at a board of regents institution, less other state and federal education benefits, capped at five times that rate over a lifetime, and must start before turning 26. The older pre-2001 route is capped at $600 a year and $3,000 for life.

Known gapThe income limit is not in the statute. §35A.13(8)(l) tells us one exists by exempting the traumatic brain injury screening from it, but the number itself lives in department rules that were not read this session.

Sources

authority · statuteIowa Code §35A.13 — Veterans trust fund (spending purposes at subsection 8)
operating · published policyIowa Department of Veterans Affairs — Iowa state benefits, Iowa Veterans Trust Fund

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