‘A way to show our respect’: Boise’s Veterans Home set for long-awaited update

Rick Holloway is on the road at 5:15 a.m. most mornings. For nearly 10 years, the 67-year-old has driven the 40 miles from his home near Sand Hollow and clocked in to work at 6 a.m for a 12-hour day, knowing that the men and women in his care are already there waiting.

The administrator of the Idaho State Veterans Home in Boise, Holloway oversees Idaho’s largest skilled nursing facility for military veterans and their families. In a few years, he hopes that job will grow larger still.

In October, Holloway helped break ground on what will be his new facility, a 122-bed home on the VA Campus near downtown Boise. If things go to schedule, construction will wrap late in 2028, and it will open to residents in early 2029 – 10 years after Holloway and his team first filed plans with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. Holloway will be 70, ready to retire, and the project, he says, will be the capstone of a 40-year career.

“I want to see this through to fruition,” he said. “What a way to show our respect for these veterans. The political climate in D.C. will change. Our care for these veterans won’t.”

In Holloway’s office, the trappings of new construction are close at hand: a hard hat, safety goggles, a DayGlo yellow vest layered over his suit jacket, hanging on the back of the door. The plans themselves are an inch thick and on double-wide paper, with detail down to the scale of the washing machines that will go inside.

The project has evolved in the six years since he submitted plans for a five-story, 166-bed home with a price tag of $114 million. The plans sat in a VA queue for years waiting for a State Home Construction Grant, the price fixed in time, even as costs spiraled through the COVID-19 pandemic. What was a $114 million build bloated to $160 million by 2021, Holloway said, which meant cutting a floor and 44 rooms out of the blueprint or risking the loss of a chance at federal funding.

The Idaho Legislature kicked in some money in 2022 as the project mired in federal bureaucracy and waited for funding. The money came this year, in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, when new Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins signed off on the check not long after taking office.

The home isn’t fully funded. Holloway doesn’t know the exact shortfall offhand but says it’s less than $10 million.

“We’re close,” he said. “We’re not quite there yet. But we’re going to proceed, because the longer we wait the more our costs are going to go up.”

As the costs rise, so does the need. The home seems to have a perpetual waiting list, Holloway says. If he could get the 166 beds, he’s sure there’d be people to fill it. The home is open to veterans and their families, as long as they were not dishonorably discharged from the military. Plenty of people meet that criteria: More than 120,000 veterans live in Idaho, according to VA data, meaning around one in 10 adults served in the military.

“The veteran population is growing like crazy,” he said. “Everybody’s moving to Idaho – veterans included.”

Idaho has four veterans homes. Boise’s is the largest, at maximum capacity almost twice the size of homes in Pocatello and Lewiston or the newest home in Post Falls. During construction, the home is capped at 80 residents, down from 122 at full sail, and there’s typically a waiting list, Holloway said.

Veterans homes provide skilled nursing care, but they’re geared towards the particular needs of soldiers.

“We have a very unique set of issues that we deal with,” Holloway said. “PTSD. Mental health. Physical therapy. They were trained to kill – they have unique situations.”

The Boise home has three master’s-level social workers on staff, and it employs a nondenominational chaplain. Its budget, which calls for the equivalent 153 full-time staff and $16.5 million in operating costs, is about twice what Holloway would expect to see in a private civilian facility.

“We take care of everything,” Holloway said.

But the current building has limits. It was built in 1966 and added onto piecemeal since. It’s a cobble of long corridors and claustrophobic pockets. Residents are two to a room, and two rooms share a bathroom – four people to one sink.

“Who went to go fight in a war to come back and share a room with someone else?” Holloway said.

He started his career in “the Dark Ages of long-term care.” Patients often lived four to a room. Leather restraints were common. Now, he wants to retire with the construction of a state-of-the-art home, “centered around the veterans,” he said.

The new building will have 122 private rooms, each with its own bathroom. Every patient floor will have a restaurant-style dining room. The plans show patios, gardens, a sports bar, a barber shop and a canteen. And, of course, ample space for the caregivers and the therapy they provide.

“We are breaking ground not just on a new home for our veterans but a place where they will be cared for, comforted, and honored every single day,” Gov. Brad Little said in a news release. “The new Boise Veterans Home will provide a modernized facility and stand as a lasting tribute to our veterans’ service and sacrifice, and a promise that we will never forget our duty to them.”

Little was on hand on Oct. 3 to break ground, along with representatives from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Idaho Division of Veterans Services.

“From the Old Soldiers’ Home of 1895 to today’s groundbreaking, Idaho has upheld a 130-year promise: to honor Veterans with care, dignity, and respect,” Mark Tschampl, director of the Idaho Division of Veterans Services, said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Nov. 4, a grassless hummock of disturbed dirt – the extent of the official groundbreaking – sat in front of the home’s east wing. Inside, contractors were working to remove asbestos so demolition can safely begin.

The new building will use much of the existing home’s footprint, which Holloway prizes for its proximity to the VA Medical Center next door. Officially, there’s a 21-page timeline for construction, all filled line items in eight-point font spelling out the next several years of work. Now, the project is about a quarter of the way down Page 1. Holloway, though, is happy to be where he is.

“I love it,” he said. “I wouldn’t do anything else. It’s more than a job – it’s a mission. These people put their lives on the line. Now, it’s our turn to serve those who served us.”