#veterans-affairs

#veterans-affairs

Photo by Google Maps.Kensington Apartments is one of the projects that will receive vouchers.Tuesday, March 7, 2023 by Chad Swiatecki
The Housing Authority of the City of Austin has shifted 300 of its housing vouchers to be more available to those experiencing homelessness, in a move aimed at helping the city reduce the number of people in chronic need of housing.

The 30-year fixed mortgage rate declined slightly last week, the first rate drop in three weeks, but it wasn't enough to boost mortgage demand.Mortgage applications fell last week by 1.2% on a seasonally adjusted basis compared to one week earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey.

Thursday, March 23 marks the one-year anniversary since the Interagency Task Force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity (PAVE) released its action plan to curb instances of bias in the housing appraisal process.Led by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge and White House Domestic Policy Advisor Ambassador Susan Rice, the PAVE task force revealed its action plan one year ago and claims that its efforts have amounted to "critical progress" in its efforts to make the homebuying process more equitable for people of color.

Massachusetts home buyer stats
Down payment amounts are based on the state's most recently available average home sale price."Minimum" down payment assumes 3% down on a conventional mortgage with a minimum credit score of 620.If you're eligible for a VA loan (backed by the Department of Veterans Affairs) or a USDA loan (backed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture), you may not need any down payment at all.Verify your home buying eligibility in Massachusetts.

iStock While a 20% down payment is a benchmark everyone would like to strive for, it certainly isn't the norm.According to a recent report from the National Association of Realtors®, almost half of consumers think they need to pay a minimum of 16% of a home's value to snag a mortgage-but that just isn't the case.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released on Thursday its Fourth Quarter 2022 Foreclosure Prevention and Refinance Report, stating that government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed 52,469 foreclosure prevention actions in Q4 2022.That figure increases the total number of GSE-assisted homeowners to 6,712,833 since the start of the conservatorship in September 2008, which placed control of Fannie and Freddie with the FHFA.

The not-for-profit service Veterans Centre Australia closed its doors on Tuesday after nearly 12 years of operation, becoming insolvent after its major funder withdrew support.The service handled up to 600 clients at a time across Australia, advocating for veterans and helping them and their families navigate the often complex bureaucratic processes to access healthcare, financial support, and employment support.

The head of Oracle Health engineering has abruptly left the business, according to reports.Don Johnson, executive vice president, swiftly departed the software and cloud biz after little more than six months in the role.Business Insider said two sources had told the publication of Johnson's departure.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that there is a possible safety issue with the bivalent Covid-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech but that it is unlikely to represent a true risk.The agency said it continues to recommend that people stay up-to-date with Covid-19 vaccines.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced on Wednesday that it will lower the VA Native American Direct Loan (NADL) program interest rate from 6% to 2.5% in an effort to make housing loans more affordable for Native American military veterans.The program provides direct loans to Native American veterans and veterans who are married to Native American non-veterans to help with the purchase, construction or renovation of a home on trust land.

Getty Images / Realtor.comWho doesn't love free money-especially when it can help you to afford your first home?Saving up for a down payment on your first home isn't fun.About a quarter of first-time buyers rated coming up with that money as one of the most difficult steps of the homebuying process, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

WASHINGTON A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick.The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer.

WASHINGTON A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick.The data had long been sought by retired military aviators who have raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer.

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has dismissed criticism from veterans' minister Johnny Mercer about his efforts to secure more funding for the military.The public row saw Mr Mercer's wife accuse the Defence Secretary of treating her husband with disdain.

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Defence secretary Ben Wallace has dismissed criticism from Tory government colleague Johnny Mercer, the veterans' minister, about his efforts to secure more money for the military.

Newly minted White House chief of staff Jeff Zients has tapped Natalie Quillian, his former deputy on the Covid response team, to serve as deputy White House chief of staff, White House officials told CNN.Quillian was widely expected to join Zients once again at the White House and now becomes one of three deputy chiefs of staff, alongside Jen O'Malley Dillon and Bruce Reed.

President Joe Biden is facing criticism for a story he told during the Delaware Veterans Summit and PACT Act Town Hall on Friday, Dec. 16.Biden claimed that after becoming vice president, he awarded his uncle Frank Biden a Purple Heart for his military service during World War II at his father's request.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has changed their mission statement for the first time since 1959 to be more inclusive of the kinds of people the department is charged to care for and to be gender-neutral to better acknowledge the contributions of women and non-binary people in the military.

WASHINGTON The U.S. government's decades-long effort to prevent terrorists from building nuclear weapons has officially added a new dimension: keeping radioactive materials used in commercial industries out of their hands as well.The Department of Energy will lead a nationwide effort to remove certain highly radioactive materials from hospitals and other civilians sites, Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the homeland security adviser, said on Thursday during an address at the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, D.C.

The majority of federal agencies - including law enforcement agencies like Customs and Border Protection - are refusing to release some of the most basic guidance materials used by their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) offices: procedures for how they do their jobs.Government Attic, a website that regularly files FOIA requests and posts the provided records, estimates that at least 60 percent of federal agencies, when faced with filling requests for FOIA standard operating procedures (SOP), claimed that the documents are in draft form and exempt from disclosure or that they don't have any such records at all.

At this point in the pandemic, it's easy to think of COVID-19 as something closer to the flu than a dangerous disease.But even though the latest Omicron variants do cause less severe symptoms than the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 is still far from a typical diseaseespecially if you get it more than once.

Paxlovid, the antiviral pill that reduces the risk of hospitalization and death from Covid-19, also reduces the risk of long Covid, according to a new study by researchers at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.The study, posted online as a preprint on Saturday, analyzed electronic records for more than 56,000 veterans with Covid-19, including more than 9,000 who were treated with Paxlovid within the first five days of their infection.