The Department of Veterans Affairs has been ordered to construct more than 2,500 temporary and permanent housing units for low-income veterans on its West Los Angeles campus.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Vietnam War veteran, announced the ruling Friday in a 124-page decision.
The 388-acre parcel was gifted to the nation in 1888 for a home for disabled soldiers. But, in recent years, the land has been leased by the VA to UCLA for the Bruins’ baseball field and to Brentwood School, which has spent millions of dollars building a football field, tennis courts and a swimming pool. Brentwood School has spent about $1 million more lobbying to keep it, according to CNN .
“Today marks the first step on the long road of getting that land back to its intended purpose,” Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran and advocate, told CNN. “As a soldiers’ home for disabled veterans.”
According to CNN, a group of veterans sued VA Last year, demanding that it build more housing and build it faster. The plaintiffs also demanded the VA terminate leases with leaseholders who do not use the land to “principally benefit” veterans.
In his decision, Carter sided with the plaintiffs.
“Over the past five decades, the West LA VA has been 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,” he wrote.
CNN reported that during the bench trial, the 80-year-old judge led lawyers and others on a 10-mile, pre-dawn hike around the entire campus asking questions such as, “How many temporary houses could be erected on Brentwood School’s baseball field?’”
Carter also ruled that leases to UCLA, Brentwood School and others on the VA property are illegal because they don’t principally serve veterans, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Carter took VA to task for falling short of its obligation to use the campus to “principally benefit veterans and their families” and wrote that it had in effect sold off the land by allowing leaseholders to construct concrete facilities on it, then arguing that tearing those facilities down would be wasteful, according to the LA Times.
“The VA must remediate its mishandling this resource so that the land may once again be available for its intended purpose: the housing of veterans,” Carter wrote.
Under the order, the VA is required to build 750 units of temporary housing within 12 to 18 months and to form a plan within six months to add another 1,800 units of permanent housing to the roughly 1,200 units already in planning and construction under the settlement terms of an earlier lawsuit, the LA Times reported.
Carter also ordered the VA to increase its street outreach staffing and to increase the number of referrals it makes to local housing authorities to qualify veterans for housing subsidies.
“In the years since 2011, the Obama administration, the Trump administration, and the Biden administration have each promised that they would act swiftly to eradicate veteran homelessness in America,” Carter wrote. “Yet, today, approximately 3,000 homeless veterans live in the Los Angeles area alone.”
Carter also ordered the VA to “employ the most efficient, affordable, and time-sensitive conventional financing of its housing projects.”
VA spokesperson Terrence Hayes told CNN: “While we do not comment on ongoing litigation, we at VA are carefully reviewing the Court’s decision and will continue to do everything in our power to end veteran homelessness – both in Los Angeles and across America.”
Hayes pointed to a recent reduction in the number of homeless veterans in Los Angeles and a rise in the number of veterans the VA is moving into permanent housing.
“While there is still much work to do,” said Hayes, “there are signs that the nation is making real progress in the fight to end veteran homelessness.”
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com
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