Holiday Profile Of A Mythical Developer

"No developer saw the housing boom coming more clearly than Burns. He was a developer of near-mythic talent, a combination of optimism, patriotism and hype. In 1921, he arrived in Los Angeles to head the Minneapolis-based real estate firm of Dickinson & Gillespie. Immediately, he recognized Los Angeles as a developer's promised land and quickly began buying up acreage... From Maine to California, he recruited private builders under the umbrella of the group he formed in 1942, the National Assn. of Home Builders (NAHB). Two years later, foreseeing that a fortune could be made when GIs came home from World War II to start families, he pushed a federal program that offered mortgages to veterans, and in 1945 teamed up with Henry J. Kaiser to form Kaiser Community Homes."

Thanks to Chris Steins