American Propaganda
Ask us about FHA loans to Remodel for Veterans, 1946 US poster: Counter card from the Federal Housing Administration inviting

Ask us about FHA loans to Remodel for Veterans

Ask Us About FHA Loans to Remodel for Veterans (1946), a counter card

A 1946 Federal Housing Administration counter card offers loans up to $5000 to remodel for veterans, low cost and long term. NAID 514242.

Techniques named on the archive record

Glittering generalities
Date
1946
Made by
Federal Housing Administration
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Truman Administration
NARA
NAID 514242; Record Group 44
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. government work) Federal Housing Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-755 (NAID 514242).

Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

Full record at propagandaarchive.org

Ask Us About FHA Loans to Remodel for Veterans is a 1946 Federal Housing Administration counter card with star borders and an eagle badge. It offers loans of up to $5000 to remodel housing for veterans on a pay-out-of-income plan (NAID 514242).

The card

The archive calls this a counter card from the Federal Housing Administration. Stars run along its borders and an eagle badge sits on it. The text is mostly terms.

ASK US ABOUT

FHA

LOANS to

Remodel for Veterans

LOANS UP TO $5000.

LOW COST..

LONG TERM

PAY OUT OF

INCOME

REMODEL FOR VETERANS ON THE

FHA

PAY-OUT-OF-INCOME PLAN

[imprint: GPO-1946—696445]

An offer, not an order

Many sheets on this site ask for a sacrifice or warn of a threat. This one makes an offer. It names a ceiling, $5000, and three terms: low cost, long term, and repayment out of income. The words "ask us" put the next step in the reader's hands. Nothing on the card says the reader must borrow, and nothing threatens him if he does not.

The archive files it under glittering generalities and says the technique is faint, resting mainly on the flag-and-eagle styling. That is a fair reading. The patriotic dress lends a federal loan program the feeling of a duty to veterans. The card also leaves things out. "Low cost" is not an interest rate, and "long term" is not a number of years. A borrower would need to ask, which is what the card tells him to do.

The veterans' housing push

The same year produced Homecoming - To No Home?, a Veterans' Housing Program poster that asks owners and builders to rent, build, remodel, or sell to a veteran. The two sheets fit together: one makes the moral case to property owners, and this one offers the financing to remodel. The record is silent on who displayed the card and on how many loans followed.

For an earlier federal housing sheet with a very different tone, see the 1941 U.S. Housing Authority poster Slums Breed Crime, which prints no figures or source. The 1946 Veterans Administration sheet People Who Stand on Swivel Chairs is another federal poster from the same year.

Sources

  • FRAME object record, Ask us about FHA loans to Remodel for Veterans, 1946. Federal Housing Administration.
  • U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 514242, local id 44-PA-755, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).