Homecoming - To No Home? is a 1946 Veterans' Housing Program poster printed by the Government Printing Office. A soldier sits on a bench with his bags, and the sheet asks owners and builders to rent, build, remodel, or sell to a veteran (NAID 514525).
What the sheet prints
A man in uniform slumps on a park bench, one kit bag on each side of him. The headline turns the word "homecoming" into a question. Below it are four numbered requests and a round seal.
HOMECOMING - TO NO HOME ?
HELP A VETERAN AND HIS FAMILY FIND A PLACE TO LIVE !
1 RENT TO A VETERAN
2 BUILD FOR A VETERAN
3 REMODEL FOR A VETERAN
4 SELL TO A VETERAN
VACANCIES FOR VETERANS FIRST ...IN '46
List All Vacancies with your VETERANS' HOUSING CENTER
Who it addresses
The veteran is the picture, but he is not the audience. The four verbs are aimed at people who own rooms, lots, or houses: landlords, builders, and sellers. The poster asks them to put a returning soldier at the front of the line and to report their vacancies to a local Veterans' Housing Center.
The archive tags the sheet with fear appeal and transfer. The fear is not for the reader's own safety. It is the discomfort of seeing a man who served now sitting outdoors, and the seal attaches that feeling to a civic duty for the year 1946.
The liberty reading
Every request on the sheet is a request. It names no ordinance, no fine, and no requisition. An owner could list a vacancy, give a veteran first refusal, or do neither. That is persuasion working the way a free country should allow it to: the government made its case to property owners and left the decision with them. Whether the program worked is a question this poster cannot answer.
A companion sheet in the same file, an FHA notice on remodeling loans for veterans, shows the credit side of the same effort. For the wartime poster file this sheet sits in, see the Office of War Information hub.
Sources
- FRAME object record, "Homecoming - To No Home? Help a Veteran and His Family Find a Place to Live!", 1946. Veterans' Housing Program; printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-999, NAID 514525, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
