The vets at VFW Post 5838 had a problem.

For nearly a decade, a guy named Jason had rented their hall in Joppatowne, Maryland, for one night every March. He told them it was for a St. Patrick’s Day heritage celebration. There would be music and food. His $400 check was good. He cleaned up afterward. Every year, it worked out.

But this year, a local news website revealed who the VFW actually had been renting to: white supremacists.

Suddenly, the post was getting emails and phone calls from people horrified that a veterans group was hosting a bunch of neo-Nazis in a barn-red Veterans of Foreign Wars hall north of Baltimore.

The vets quickly gathered for a meeting Monday night to figure out what do.

Like most VFW posts, Joppatowne Memorial Post 5838 is struggling to keep its little hall — with a fire marshal-approved capacity of 110 — afloat. With dwindling membership numbers and a new generation of vets who don’t gather at these places across the country, many posts are scrambling to find renters.

“When we rent the hall, we don’t ask all about the people,” said Robert Waag, a Korean War veteran who serves as the post’s quartermaster. “We rent to all kinds of people. Families, biker clubs. The Hell’s Angels. We rent to them.”

But Jason Tankersley, he insisted, didn’t tell them he was the head of the Maryland State Skinheads. They must not have done business with him shirtless or they would’ve seen his swastika and SS tattoos. And they presumably never saw the National Geographic documentary “American Skinheads,” in which Tankersley is shown training other skinheads in combat and coaching them on how to recruit others to join the movement.

Tankersley didn’t return a call for comment. But Waag said he also never told them that the music they play at the hall is linked to Label 56, an aggressively racist music outlet that was home to Wade Michael Page. He’s the white power rocker who slaughtered six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin five years ago.

Now the post had to decide whether to cancel its agreement with Tankersley five days before his annual event. They were under intense pressure from the community to do so.

Waag said he didn’t have a problem with the post’s renting its hall to the Hell’s Angels.

“They clean it up, and they’re really nice to deal with,” said Waag, who rides motorcycles and joined the VFW because his bike club holds its meetings there, too.

But white supremacists? That was too much for Waag, who served in the Air Force for 15 years.

At their meeting Monday night, he and the other leaders of the post debated the American values that they fought for and some of their comrades died for. And which values they think veterans should represent.

It was an emotional discussion. But it didn’t take long for them to agree on the right thing to do. They posted their decision on the post’s Facebook page that night.

“It has been brought to our attention that a group renting our hall does not represent the values and the views of Joppatowne Memorial VFW Post 5838 and the VFW. We have canceled the event and are in the process of returning their deposit. We sincerely apologize to our Post 5838 members and to our community for this unfortunate misunderstanding. We pledge to do a better job scrutinizing future hall rental applicants going forward.”

The white power guys, however, called foul. Matthew Heimbach, a Maryland-born white nationalist who has spoken at the Joppatowne event in the past, called it an assault on free speech.

“It’s a sad precedent, shutting this down,” said Heimbach.