GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Since last Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a legal holiday, although Erick Saks was busy picking up supplies, he gave the soldiers from the SkillBridge program the day off from working on five new homes for Operation Lifeline.

Despite the chill and the opportunity for a day off, Josh Bennett and Guillermo Mendez decided to keep hammering and sawing. Both are in the Navy, so they were getting paid. There were no timelines to meet, no expectations to reach. Every moment on the job was another chance to learn more about the next phase of their futures – the construction business.

Saks, a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, founded and is the executive director of Operation Lifeline. It’s a nonprofit that focuses its efforts to providing housing for veterans and low-income families to change lives and create stronger communities.

The current project involves four homes for low-income families and one for a disabled veteran. Saks worked with Clay County’s Housing Finance Authority and the Florida State Housing Initiatives Partnership Program to secure enough financing to make it possible for low-income and first-time buyers to break the cycle of renting and homelessness.

“Clay County have one program in particular that we love to work with through the Housing Finance Authority,” Saks said. “It's a lending program where they will lend you, the number is, I want to say, $180,000 for builders who are interested in doing affordable housing. In exchange, it's a very fair interest rate.

“We’ve been working with them for the last few years, trying to devise good ways to address the affordable housing. The other program I mentioned that we work with is the SHIP program. Through that, we're able to offer $150,000 of down payment assistance for these folks. The houses we are constructing, at $250,000, will have a mortgage of only $100,000. That means they will be all-in with a mortgage, insurance and taxes under $1,000 a month for a house that they own. We're super excited about this.”

Saks said the veteran’s house and two of the four houses are under contract.

Another way Operation Lifeline saves money is using active-duty military from the Department of Defense’s SkillBridge Program. It allows service members who are transitioning out of the military hands-on internships to help them gain skills and certifications for civilian careers.

Operation Lifeline has partnerships with CareerSource North Florida and the Northeast Florida Builders Association to provide real-world experience in construction while supporting veterans and communities.

“You get to learn a trade before you get out of the military,” Bennett said. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Saks said the construction sites are essentially classrooms.

“We're going to take them through every step of building this house,” he said. “The intent is to give them this experience and education. The intent is to give them this so that they can get a career in the construction industry, which is desperately in need of folks with this kind of talent.”

Saks said there are safeguards built into the program to make sure homebuyers don’t use the purchases to obtain the houses for cheaply and re-sell at full price.

Saks said he wasn’t surprised that two of the SkillBridge soldiers worked on an off day.

“They are great role models,” he said. “We can tell them about life. When you're around these guys, it's just a fantastic group – the camaraderie, everything about it. This rubs off. It’s another part of what makes this project so rewarding.”