VA Secretary Urges Builders to Hire Young Veterans
 In one of the fastest resolutions ever to be adopted as NAHB policy, the association’s board of directors on April 15 voted by acclamation to work closely with the Department of Veterans Affairs to assist veterans in obtaining gainful employment and to realize the dream of homeownership.
Only half an hour earlier, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson asked the directors to go back to their local associations and encourage efforts among their members to seek out young veterans returning from service in Afghanistan and Iraq and give them a job. “They will be wonderful, wonderful employees for you,” Nicholson told the NAHB board. “I implore you to reach out to these people.” Returning veterans in the 20-24 age group are experiencing a 20% rate of unemployment, Nicholson said, twice the nation’s overall rate of joblessness. “For what these people are doing for us, we can’t thank them enough,” he said. On the homeownership front, the secretary reported changes that Congress made at the end of last year to improve the effectiveness of the VA home loan program. To read a story from NBN Online on those legislative provisions, click here. Nicholson reported to the board that since it was created in 1944 to assist veterans of World War II, the VA home loan program has provided $850 billion worth of mortgages to some 18 million veterans. Almost all of those mortgages were made without a downpayment. Last year, the program guaranteed 336,000 loans worth $44 billion, he said. Nicholson has been a home builder himself and was a member of the Home Builders Association of Metropolitan Denver. “I still think that the camaraderie and fraternity that comes about through associations is one of the most unique I know of — being a builder with a bunch of people trying to bring about the American dream,” he said. Photo by Herman Farrer | 
