A federal judge in California has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to get moving on a grand plan to build housing on the spacious grounds of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center to end the blight of veteran homelessness in the city.
In toughly worded rulings in September and October, federal district Judge David O. Carter made clear that his main purpose in ordering how the VA's property should be used was to provide shelter for the nearly 3,000 veterans in the area estimated to be homeless by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
"We are the homeless veterans capital of the world right now," Carter said in the course of the class-action suit brought by homeless and disabled veterans seeking housing on the 388 acres of the West LA campus.
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"We can't let this happen," said Carter, a Purple Heart Marine veteran of the 1968 siege of Khe Sanh during the Vietnam war. Many of the homeless veterans in Los Angeles "bear indelible physical and mental scars from their time in the armed forces," Carter said, but the VA "has for decades strayed from its mission to care for these veterans."
In his final ruling in the case issued on Oct. 11, Carter ordered the VA to begin constructing 750 units of temporary housing immediately and another 1,800 units of permanent housing by 2030. The 1,800 units of permanent housing covered by the ruling would be in addition to the 1,200 units of permanent housing for veterans the VA has promised since 2015 but failed to complete.
Much of the attention in Los Angeles to Carter's rulings has focused on his scrapping of leases that the VA had granted over the years on the West LA VAMC campus for everything from oil wells to parking lots and a baseball stadium named for Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson, where the UCLA Bruins play their home games.
As a result of the injunction issued by Carter voiding UCLA's lease, school officials scrambled to collect the bats, balls, gloves and other equipment at the stadium before VA security, on Carter's orders, slapped locks on the premises and put up "No Trespassing" signs.
Former Army Spc. Rob Reynolds, who recruited homeless veterans to join in a class-action suit to force the VA to build housing, said the parking lot of the UCLA baseball field would be an ideal spot to bring in modular homes for the temporary housing ordered by Carter.
"One of the reasons is that the UCLA baseball stadium has sewer electrical water lines that could be tapped into quickly," said Reynolds, 35, who served with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq and and is a veterans advocate in the class-action suit.
UCLA and Bridgeland Resources LLC, which has oil facilities on the West LA campus, have filed a notice of appeal in the case, but the Brentwood School District, which has a swimming pool, tennis courts and athletic fields on the grounds, reached an agreement approved by Carter to share the facilities with veterans to avoid losing the lease.
The VA has yet to give notice on whether an appeal would be filed. In hearings before Carter, Brad Rosenberg, the Justice Department lawyer representing the VA, said a decision on whether to appeal was still pending, Reynolds told Military.com.
"We're all hopeful they won't appeal, because this is the right thing to do here to get veterans off the street," Reynolds said. "If the VA were to appeal, it would just be blocking progress in getting vets off the streets, which would be awful."
In a statement, the VA said that it does not comment on ongoing litigation. The statement by VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes last week was similar to one issued by the VA last month in response to Carter's rulings and added that "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."
In the trial of the case, and in follow-up court hearings, Carter said his authority to make rulings stemmed from the 1888 donation of the land to the government by Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker, who was dubbed the "Queen of Los Angeles society" in the late 1800s, on condition that the land be used to set up a West Coast branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.
Using the conditions stated in the donation of the land, Carter ruled that any lease that did not "principally benefit" veterans would be voided, and he challenged the leaseholders to come up with ways in which their uses of the land would also aid veterans.
Mark Rosenbaum, the senior special counsel for strategic litigation at the nonprofit Public Counsel law firm representing the veterans, told Military.com that Carter's rulings could signal "the beginning of the end of veteran homelessness in Los Angeles."
He noted that Carter has also ordered the VA to bring on more outreach workers to line up homeless and disabled veterans who are eligible for the modular housing units.
"I think this is gonna do it. I think this is going to be the end of Los Angeles being the homeless capital of the U.S.," Rosenbaum said.
Editor's note: This story was updated to clarify the role of one of the parties in the lawsuit.
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