Since the passage of the National Housing Act of 1934, Americans have been promised a safe, decent and sanitary home. While it isn't written in stone like our federal housing policy, the national agenda also aims to make sure that anyone who has served his or her country in the military service should also have a safe, decent and stable place to call home.

Frequently, that goal can be achieved through the GI Bill, which allows for no-down-payment loans. On top of that, many states have special programs for the servicemen and women residing within their borders.

Many private entities also have stepped up to help America's returning GIs in one way or another. National homebuilder Pulte, for example, gave away 20 brand-new homes to worthy veterans over the last two years.

But arguably, no single company has done more than the Madison, Wisconsin-based Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. Over the last two years, Fairway, which has 190 branches covering all 50 states, has given 27 houses mortgage-free to wounded veterans or their families.

"I believe you can make a difference and make a living at the same time. That's when it becomes fun," says Louise Thaxton, the 61-year-old dynamo who makes Fairway's effort roll.

"Nobody asks to be a hero; it just sometimes turns out that way," she says, quoting a popular line from the 2001 military film "Black Hawk Down." "We can step back and someone else can give them a mortgage-free house, or we can step up."

Working in Fairway's Leesville, Louisiana, office, Thaxton is on a crusade on behalf of servicepeople returning from the wars in the Middle East.

"I saw the need for excellence in serving the military," she explains. "We're the watchdog for the better part of the world, and someone needs to be a watchdog that stands between the warriors and the wolves."

That watchdog, as it turns out, is a 5-foot-2 grandmother of 17 who sees the military as a "targeted population," easily cheated, over-billed, ripped off and scammed.

In other words, our fighting men and women make great marks.

They typically are young and financially inexperienced. They may have been trained for combat, but not for fiscal battles. What's more, servicepeople are often transient and, therefore, totally unaware of which local businesses are honest and which are not.

At Fort Polk in Louisiana, Thaxton saw young vets being raked over the coals by used car companies and payday lenders, and she also saw overcharging by title companies and even a bit of gouging by some mortgage brokers.

"I saw lenders not using VA or FHA loans because 'they were too hard' just so they could get the extra fees" from conventional mortgages, she says. "They would refinance people from a 30-year fixed loan to a three-year ARM just to get $5,000 in fees."

Besides closing her own deals, Thaxton began teaching her colleagues about the ins and outs of dealing with returning warriors, which is not the same as working with everyday citizens. For one thing, they often don't have the luxury of time and cannot wait for the market to turn. Another example: Vets may not be stationed at the same base as their spouse, or the civilian half of the couple may be unable to find work.

Four years ago, Thaxton asked her company to back an extension of her education efforts, and Fairway CEO Steve Jacobson gave her his blessing. "He told me to just run with it," Thaxton says.

So she set about creating a continuing education class for real estate agents and brokers on how to deal with military clients. At the end of the class, students are awarded a Certified Military Residential Specialist diploma. (The designation is Fairway's, and not the Mortgage Bankers Association's or the National Association of Realtors', which has its own military designation.)

Last summer, in Clarksville, Tennessee, the home of Fort Campbell, Thaxton led a three-hour seminar for 400 realty pros from as far as 100 miles away. Pacing back and forth in her ever-present combat boots -- she wears them even when she's training for her first half-marathon in the rural backroads of Louisiana -- she asked the entire audience to stand. Then she asked those who have served in the military to sit down.

Next, she asked anyone who's a military spouse, parent, grandparent or child to sit as well, followed by aunts, uncle, nieces and nephews of someone in the service.

Only a few people were left standing, and the point was made: "We are all connected to the military."

At each seminar, Fairway donates a home to a wounded vet. In Tennessee, the recipient was retired Army Specialist Marshall Lane, who was wounded during combat operations in Afghanistan, earning a Purple Heart as well as a Combat Medical Badge for performing his duties while under fire from the enemy.

Everywhere she goes, Thaxton rallies the real estate troops.

"I have a huge goal that every wounded warrior receive a mortgage-free house," she said in Clarksville. "It's not impossible if everyone gives something. There's none of us who can do everything, but everyone can do something."

When the evangelist for wounded vets closed the class, the entire room stood and burst into applause.

When Paul Henderson's mother took every single light bulb with her when she moved, the Tacoma, Washington, agent was so embarrassed that he went back after she left and replaced them all.

And so began a discussion recently on ActiveRain, the real estate site where Henderson asked about the worst damage his fellow agents have seen sellers do when moving out.

As you might expect, the responses were amazing.

The harm some disgruntled owners have done to their homes when they are forced to leave because of a foreclosure or short sale is legendary. But the destruction Marte Cliff saw after an owner had his house repossessed might just take the prize.

"They took the furnace, the kitchen sink and the range, the pressure tank, all the light fixtures and even the switch plates," said the former Seattle-area agent, who now writes a real estate marketing blog.

But that's not the worst of it, according to Cliff: "Then they threw rocks down the well."

To add insult to injury: When the well driller came to drill a new well, Cliff gave him a map and showed him where the septic tank and drain field were, telling him not to go near them. But the driller paid no heed to her warning, nor to the map.

"He didn't pay any attention," she said, and his rig "fell right into the septic tank."

Likewise, when Mike Alexander of Buyers Broker of Florida in Windermere previewed a luxury short sale, the place was bare to the walls. "No fixtures, no kitchen, no bathroom, no doors, no flooring, no A/C ... They even pulled the electrical wires up into the attic. The home was really stripped to the core."

The backstory: The husband had moved out during the sale, leaving his wife. So she got even by running an ad for contractors to come buy whatever they wanted.

Scott Godzyk of Godzyk Real Estate Services in Manchester, New Hampshire, had a similar experience. "It's one thing to take the whole kitchen and bath with you, but another to (put) a hole in every wall and cement the toilets, sinks and tubs," he said.

Mike Castle of Century 21 M&M Associates in Capitola, California, once saw a house where all the light fixtures and appliances were ripped out. Furthermore, the seller kicked holes in the deck. "This person was not happy about having to sell and move out," he remarked.

But sellers don't have to be angry to do damage. Often it's unintended, but it's destruction nonetheless.

For example, Nancy Holloway of the Regeneration Property Group in Anaheim, California, represented the buyer of a house in which the "moron seller" took a chisel to the kitchen tile to remove the built-in stove.

This, even though the contract clearly stated the stove would remain behind.

Jill Sackler of Charles Rutenberg Realty in Merrick, New York, once bought a house in which the seller removed the refrigerator, which was supposed to stay, plus the washing machine. The seller also "tried to yank the dryer out of the wall but couldn't ... so it just broke instead."

A few months later, the seller must have had a touch of remorse. She called, offering to return the broiler pan she and her husband had taken from the oven.

Durant Vick of Roanoke, Virginia's The Real Estate Group saw a house in which the seller had placed one of those spiky plastic mats on a hardwood floor. The mats are meant to go on top of carpet, not wood, so it left holes in the floor that had to be filled in.

Lots of times, though, the damage isn't done by the seller: The culprit may be the moving company, or the owner who is moving himself.

In Clarksville, Tennessee, Debbie Reynolds of PenFed Realty, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate, saw a house where the seller drove his rental truck too close to the house and tore off the siding. "It looked pretty bad," she said.

Teri Pacitto of RE/MAX Olson & Associates in Westlake Village, California, recalled an incident when "professional" movers scratched the dark wood stair treads and flooring while moving the seller's furniture. The floors had to be completely redone.

And in Stuart, Florida, Gabe Sanders of BlueWater Real Estate Services said he had a case once where the moving van "took out the garage" when it backed into it. The moving company paid for the damages, but the buyer decided to back out of the deal anyway.

One of the most frequent bugaboos in real estate is sellers who leave their homes a mess, failing to clean up behind them when they leave.

But dirt is one thing; filth is another.

Lyn Sims of RE/MAX Suburban in Schaumburg, Illinois, had one house where the seller left the refrigerator full of spoiled food. And Pat and Wayne Harriman of Harriman Real Estate in Wallingford, Connecticut, rented a house to a foreign potentate who left the place in shambles -- cigarette burns in the carpet and floors, walls scratched and dented, food left in the sink and fridge.

The landlord went after the crown prince for damages, but he had diplomatic immunity. So the landlord paid for the repairs.

Often the seller pays for any damages, one way or another. But give credit to these and other realty pros, who sometimes foot the bill out of their own pockets to keep their deals afloat.

Dan Tabit of Northstone Real Estate in Sammamish, Washington, is one such agent. When his seller left some large holes in the drywall where the TV was mounted, the buyer was livid. But Tabit stepped into the breach to fix the damage himself.

"Everyone was happy in the end," he recalled.

Consumer complaints about financial products and services such as home and auto loans are more than just statistics. They indicate the real and difficult challenges people face as they try to navigate the financial seas.

So, as of last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (cfpb.gov) began allowing aggrieved customers to share their stories with the public, not just the bureau, which is the federal watchdog agency established as a result of the mortgage meltdown.

Since the CFPB hit the ground running in July 2011, it has taken nearly 600,000 complaints, mostly about mortgages and debt collection. It also fields grievances about many other financial products, including credit reports, payday lending and credit cards.

The complaints have helped the CFPB understand the issues consumers face when dealing with lenders and collection companies, and have led to dozens of new regulations to protect people from further abuses. Now, by allowing disgruntled consumers to publicly share their versions of what went down, the agency will help other consumers avoid becoming just another number in a statistical database.

The decision to publish customer narratives "will serve to empower consumers by helping them make informed decisions and helping track trends in the consumer financial market," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray in announcing the new policy. "Narratives help humanize the problems consumers face ... (They) shed light on the full consumer perspective."

Over the CFPB's short life, its database has become the nation's largest public collection of complaints against financial institutions. As of March 1, a whopping 30 percent of the beefs had to do with mortgages, and 14 percent dealt with credit reporting, which is central to obtaining financing. An additional 24 percent involved debt collection.

Typical complaints might deal with loan modification scams, credit decisions, incorrect credit information, problems with escrow distributions and excessive settlement charges.

Worth noting: Over the last few years, gripes about mortgages have steadily declined, which means either one of two things: 1. Lenders and servicers have cleaned up their acts, rather than risk being outed in a high-profile database; or 2. Consumers have simply given up in their quests for justice.

But Garth Graham of Stratmor Group, a mortgage industry consulting firm, says that even a small number of dissatisfied borrowers "can really hurt your business."

In surveys for various clients covering a total of 24,000 borrowers, Stratmor found that when people aren't happy, they tell others about it. While the vast majority of the surveyed borrowers were highly satisfied, 8 percent rated their satisfaction at 6 or below on a 10-point scale.

However, 80 percent of that small, dissatisfied minority are likely to post a negative comment somewhere, Graham said. And "if they don't think they are being heard, they are likely to complain to the CFPB. That can really be damaging."

Until now, when the agency heard a complaint, it forwarded it to the company involved to obtain a response. After 15 days, the complaint was entered into the database and filtered by product, issue, company and state. The database also showed whether the company responded in a timely manner, how the company responded, and whether the consumer disputed that response.

Under the new policy, consumers have the option to share their versions of what happened, good or bad. Their stories, the CFPB believes, will offer others first-person accounts of their experiences, greatly enhancing the utility of the database.

"The narratives will provide context to complaints, spotlight specific trends and help consumers make informed decisions," the agency said in its announcement. "The narratives may encourage companies to improve the overall quality of their products and services, and more vigorously compete over good customer service."

To mollify objections to the expanded online complaint portal by businesses and their trade groups, which mainly worried than it would permit the publication of unsubstantiated details, the CFPB included several caveats and laid out specific procedures and safeguards.

First, consumers have to opt-in to share their stories when submitting their complaints, and can opt-out at any time. Personal information such as name, address and identifying numbers will be scrubbed from the narratives to protect consumers.

As always, companies are allowed to address grievances about them. They will be under no obligation to offer a public response, telling their side of the problem, but can do so if they like. Complaints make it into the database only after a company responds or after the company has had it for 15 days, whichever comes first. Consumer narratives won't be published until the company provides a public-facing response or until after it has had the complaint for 60 calendar days, whichever comes first.

Consultant Graham is telling his clients and other lenders to get in front of their customers' grievances by reaching out to borrowers shortly after closing, and addressing any issues they have before they broadcast their gripes publically.

"We think that's a better approach than to wait until an unhappy consumer tells his story to the CFPB," he said. "There is little doubt that if the CFPB makes it possible for dissatisfied customers to tell their stories in public, they will do so."