A federal judge on Friday ordered the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build more than 2,500 units of housing for low-income veterans on its West Los Angeles campus.
In a 124-page decision following a non-jury trial, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter also ruled that leases to UCLA, the Brentwood School and others on the VA property are illegal because they don’t primarily serve veterans.
UCLA’s Jackie Robinson baseball stadium is on 10 acres leased from the VA, as is Brentwood School’s 22-acre athletic facility.
Carter castigated the VA for abusing its mission to use the 388-acre campus to “principally benefit veterans and their families.”
“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.
Carter wrote that the VA has in effect sold the land off, by allowing lease holders to construct concrete facilities on it and then arguing that tearing those facilities down would be wasteful.
“The VA must remediate its mishandling of this resource so that the land may once again be available for its intended purpose: the housing of veterans,” Carter wrote.
Carter’s order requires the VA 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.
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.
He is also requiring the VA to begin construction of a town center, including such amenities as a cafe and general store, on the property within 18 months.
The ruling did not specify what should happen to the leases the VA has with UCLA, Brentwood School and others but said the “court will determine an exit strategy” after more hearings.
The U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the VA in the trial, declined to comment.
In closing statements at the trial, Department of Justice attorney Brad Rosenberg argued that the VA has been making progress in ending veteran homelessness and that the judge’s proposal to house more veterans on the campus would be financially burdensome and fundamentally alter the way the VA houses homeless veterans.
“Plaintiffs want to shift VA’s scarce resources to a single location to house people with high needs,” he said. “Whether or not the court thinks that is a good idea, we think it’s a bad idea.”
The Department of Justice declined further comment. UCLA and the Brentwood School did not immediately responded to requests for comment.
The three-week-long trial in downtown federal court reprised litigation going back to 2011 that challenged the leases and asserted an unmet need for veteran housing. In the earlier case, a federal judge ruled that several leases were illegal. Under the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016, some were terminated and others renewed.
Subsequently, the VA’s inspector general found that leases to the Brentwood School, as well as land containing oil wells and parking lots, did not comply with the leasing act’s requirement to “principally benefit veterans and their families.”
The VA disagreed and retained the leases. A Brentwood official testified in the recent trial that the school pays rent of $850,000 annually to the VA and provides more than $900,000 in “in-kind” services, including meals for veterans and a shuttle service so they can use the campus.
In a 2015 settlement, the VA agreed to develop a master plan for the campus. A draft plan, completed in 2016, called for 1,200 units of housing in new and rehabilitated buildings with a commitment to complete more than 770 units by the end of 2022. Only 54 of those units were completed by the deadline, and only 233 are currently open.
“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 in his ruling released Friday. “Yet, today, approximately 3,000 homeless veterans live in the Los Angeles area alone.”
Acknowledging the plaintiffs’ argument that a lack of enforcement had allowed the failures to occur, Carter said he would appoint a court monitor to ensure that terms of his ruling are met.
In a rebuke of the VA’s practice of contracting with developers whose use of cumbersome tax credits has delayed the construction of housing, Carter ordered the VA to “employ the most efficient, affordable, and time sensitive conventional financing of its housing projects.”
The decision followed testimony in which plaintiffs recounted the history of Veterans Row — the collection of tents that sprung up along San Vicente Boulevard just outside the VA grounds during the pandemic.
Rob Reynolds, an Iraq war veteran who did not live in Veterans Row but became an advocate for veterans who did, testified to the squalor, despair and deaths, as well as the neglect by VA staff who never came outside the fence to offer aid.
Reynolds traced the evolution of the VA’s response to Veterans Row from initial neglect to a plan to bring the vets inside to a village of pup tents and then to their current accommodations in 8-foot by 8-foot tiny homes, which he described as “the boxes that they live in.” He attributed the VA’s increased attention to media coverage.
On Friday, Reynolds said he was thankful for the decision.
“I felt all along if this went in front of a judge, he would see what we have all seen for years,” Reynolds said. “The facts are indisputable. I think this is a great start to end veteran homelessness and get this property back to its original intended use as a soldiers’ home.”
