A Los Angeles judge ordered the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build more permanent housing for disabled veterans in its West Los Angeles campus.
On September 7, 2024, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Vietnam War veteran, also determined portions of the campus were illegally leased by the DVA to a private school, an oil company, UCLA’s baseball team and others. Carter ordered that the contracts be terminated.
The “cost of the VA’s inaction is veterans’ lives,” Carter said in his 125-page ruling, as reported by NBC Los Angeles, which came after four weeks of trial in Los Angeles federal court amidst a lawsuit against the VA by a group of veterans with disabilities who are unhoused.
Carter called the VA out on five decades of being “infected by bribery, corruption and the influence of the powerful and their lobbyists, and enabled by a major educational institution in excluding veterans’ input about their own lands.”
According to Carter, the VA permitted the original plot of land that was deeded in 1888 to be an Old Soldiers’ Home to be drastically reduced and leased out. The $407 billion annually budgeted VA “quietly sold off” land which injured and homeless military veterans needed.
A statement by VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said the department does not comment on ongoing litigation but that it would “continue to do everything in our power to end veteran homelessness — both in Los Angeles and across America. No veteran should be homeless in this country they swore to defend, and we will not rest until veteran homelessness is a thing of the past.”
Hayes said the department is committed to providing permanent housing for veterans in West L.A. as soon as possible.
‘We will stop at nothing to end veteran homelessness, including through ensuring that critical funding and resources get into the hands of those who need it most. VA will continue to take every action and make every investment available to us to meet this critical goal.”
The VA promised to increase housing by 1,200 units on a 388-acre campus by 2030 before the trial. During the trial, the VA alleged the construction of the housing would create financial burden.
“The problem, however, is one of the VA’s own making,” Carter wrote.
The VA counted veterans’ disability payments as income and disqualified them from housing on the West L.A. campus, Carter found in a previous court order.
“Now, the West L.A. VA promises they finally have a plan that will end veteran homelessness in Los Angeles — but only if the plaintiffs leave them alone and the court does not issue an injunction,” the judge wrote. “After years of broken promises, corruption, and neglect, it is no surprise that veterans are unwilling to take them at their word.”
Besides termination of illegal land-use agreements, which include UCLA’s Jackie Robinson baseball stadium, Carter found that the veterans are owed more than 2,500 united in the West L.A. campus. An exit strategy will be drawn up by the court at a September 25, 2024, hearing for the lease holders.
Carter said that approximately 3,000 veterans are homeless in the Los Angeles area. Each administration since 2011 was warned by the VA’s Office of the Inspector General, veterans and federal courts that enough was not being done to provide housing.
Carter ordered the VA to build 750 temporary housing units in the next 18 months and create a plan in the next six month to add another 1,800 units of permanent housing to the plan of only 1,200.
Southern California‘s main health care facility for veterans is the West Los Angeles campus where the VA is required to provide preventive and primary care, acute hospital care, mental health services, specialty care and long-term care, including residential treatment and housing services.
“It is time for the VA’s leadership at the highest levels to recognize its obligation and mission statement to care for those who have borne the battle. It is time for the disabled veterans of Los Angeles to come home,” Carter wrote.
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Rebecca Barnabi
