Assistance program
Automobiles and Adaptive Equipment for Certain Disabled Veterans and Members of the Armed Forces
$1.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Veterans Benefits Administration, Veterans Affairs, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments for Specified Use
- CFDA number
- 64.100
- What it does
- Provide financial assistance to certain disabled servicepersons and Veterans toward the purchase price of an automobile or other conveyance and an additional amount for adaptive equipment deemed necessary to insure the eligible person will be able to operate or make use of the automobile or other conveyance. Provide adaptive equipment only for certain other disabled Veterans.
- Who benefits
- Disabled servicepersons and veterans.
- Who applies
- Veterans with honorable service and servicepersons on active duty having a service-connected disability due to loss or permanent loss of use (LOU) in one or both feet, one or both hands, or a permanent impairment of vision of in both eyes to a prescribed degree or a severe burn injury defined as disability caused by deep partial thickness or full thickness burns resulting in scar formation that causes contractures and limits motion of one or more extremities or the trunk and precludes effective operation of an automobile or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Eligibility for an automobile grant may be based on functional as well as organic LOU of an extremity or blindness. Eligibility based on burn injury only applies to claims filed on or after October 1, 2011. For adaptive equipment only, eligibility also exists if there is service-connected ankylosis of one or both knees or one or both hips (see 38 U.S.C. 3902(b)(2) for more information). Servicepersons on active duty also qualify under the same criteria as Veterans.
- Authorized by
- 38 U.S.C. 39. AUTOMOBILES AND ADAPTIVE EQUIPMENT FOR CERTAIN DISABLED VETERANS AND MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES
- 38 U.S.C. § 3.808
- Program site
- http://www.va.gov. ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Recipients
This program's money is paid out as non-itemized direct payments — USAspending records it under a single aggregate, so individual recipients aren't listed. The dollars and agencies above are complete; the recipient roster isn't part of the public record for programs like this.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments