After U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in September 2025 to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War, Texas state House candidate Sara McGee, a Democrat, claimed in a Nov. 14 X post that it would cost more to rename the agency than to house every homeless veteran in America.
The rumor also spread on Facebook and Threads.
In a follow-up post, McGee said she estimated a total cost of $5 billion to $10 billion for renaming the agency — which, on the low end, would be about equivalent to a $155,000 home for each of the approximately 32,000 homeless veterans living in the United States.
McGee did not share a reputable source for her numbers. One estimate for the cost of renaming the Department of Defense, reported by NBC News, was $2 billion, much lower than hers. McGee also did not appear to consider any potential administrative costs associated with organizing free housing for homeless veterans — nor did she consider that the Department of Veterans Affairs already spends several billion dollars a year on efforts to end homelessness among veterans.
McGee did not immediately return a message sent via the contact form of her website asking for more information about her sourcing. The Department of Defense has not publicly released an estimate for renaming the agency and did not immediately return a request for more information.
Given that we have no definitive estimates for the cost of housing every veteran experiencing homelessness or for renaming the Department of Defense, we have not rated this claim.
It is worth noting that any official change to the Department of Defense's name would likely require an act of Congress, not just Trump's executive order.
Here's the information we have:
Report: Renaming DOD could cost $2 billion
On Nov. 12, 2025, NBC News reported that "Trump's directive to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as $2 billion, according to six people with knowledge of the potential cost."
The news agency described its six anonymous sources as "two senior Republican congressional staffers, two senior Democratic congressional staffers and two other people briefed on the potential cost."
It was not possible to independently confirm this estimate. According to NBC News, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said a final cost estimate for changing the name had not been set.
"A final cost estimate has not been determined at this time due to the Democrat shutdown furloughing many of our critical civilians," he reportedly said. (The government shutdown ended Nov. 12
It's entirely likely that it could cost billions of dollars to rename the Department of Defense. As Politico reported Sept. 4., the Defense Department has hundreds of Pentagon agencies with their own stationery, emblems, plaques and other signage, as well as bases around the world.
In fact, for comparison, a group tasked by Congress to investigate the cost of erasing names associated with the Confederacy from the Department of Defense estimated in 2022 that renaming just nine army bases would cost $21 million (see Page 74 of
The Pentagon's efforts to remove these names also demonstrated how government costs can balloon past estimates: Lt. Gen. Kevin Vereen, Army deputy chief of staff for installations,
Cost of housing homeless veterans
The VA did not immediately return an inquiry as to whether the agency has estimated how much it would cost to house the entire homeless veteran population.
The agency's budget for homelessness programs was $3.2 billion from Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025 — the most recent fiscal year as of this writing. Per the VA, the funds will go to about 300,000 veterans "who are all at different stages in their journey out of homelessness."
Notably, the VA's homelessness programs already use the "Housing First" model
McGee's estimate of the number of homeless veterans appeared to be based on legitimate data: Veterans Affairs counted "32,882 veterans who experienced homelessness" in January 2024. However, while these types of "point-in-time" counts help provide a snapshot of the homeless population, they often underestimate the scale of homelessness.
For example, they don't account for the total number of people who might become homeless in a year, and they often leave out certain kinds of homelessness, such as people in jails who have no home or those who couch-surf among friends and family due to economic hardship. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, "historical patterns suggest that the annual total can be about twice the point-in-time count."
Thus, McGee's suggestion of providing a $155,000 home to each homeless veteran based on a single point-in-time count may not account for people who fall between the cracks of these statistics.
Even assuming that the VA's point-in-time count is accurate, it's not possible to provide a legitimate estimate on how much it costs to house every veteran experiencing homelessness because there's simply no consensus on the cost of ending homelessness in the United States overall.
In sum …
There's no official, definitive estimate for ending veteran homelessness, nor has the Trump administration released an estimate for renaming the Department of Defense. The VA's budget for homelessness programs in fiscal year 2025 was $3.2 billion, $1.2 billion more than one reported estimate for renaming the Department of Defense.