Good News for Vets in LA

Nice to close out the year on what looks like a good note.

Y’all stay safe tonight. Personally, we spend it with family and youngest grandkids, and try to stay the heck off any main roads. Too many amateur drinkers out there, and I still remember a New Year’s Eve drive to church in El Paso when a probable drunk blew the red on our right came through the intersection at about 80. Luckily all saw him coming and no one tried going, despite the green light. Reminded me of some doggerel my Dad was really fond of quoting:

Here lies the body of Jonathon Wray

Who died defending his right-of-way.

He was right – dead right – as he sped along

But he’s just as dead as if he’d been wrong.

Anyway, the point of the column – the 9th Circuit ruled against the VA’s current practice in Los Angeles.

The land was originally deeded to the federal government in 1888 to provide care and housing for veterans. In the early to mid-20th Century, thousands of veterans lived on the campus. However that changed by the 1970s and the campus has largely been focused on healthcare, with a large hospital.

So far, so good – except:

The VA also has leased several portions of the campus to schools, including the University of California, Los Angeles, and oil companies.

This case, Powers v. McDonough, is a class action lawsuit that argued that the lack of housing on the campus left many homeless or disabled veterans from being able to get the care they needed. In September 2024, Judge David O. Carter issued a sweeping ruling, finding that not only was the VA discriminating against disabled veterans by failing to build housing on the West Los Angeles campus, many of the leases of its land to private entities were invalid.

(Reminds me a bit of BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closing process back in the ’90s, when the Clinton Administration showed that some how, the bases on the highest dollar real estate were – surprahz, surprahz – the most disposable. If it’s military in California, it should really be repurposed to someone who can make some money off it, right? Rather than those pesky vets.)

In recent years many homeless encampments, largely full of former service members, formed on the perimeter of the campus. “Veterans Row,” as it was called, was cleared in 2021, after the VA said it would bring some people inside in temporary structures. The VA is currently building 1,200 permanent housing units on the campus as a result of a separate lawsuit that settled in 2015.

In May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a transformation of the campus into a “National Center for Warrior Independence.” The directive, issued as the VA was actively fighting Judge Carter’s order for housing, called on the VA to build enough housing units to provide homes for 6,000 veterans by 2028.

So in theory we should see housing for 7200 vets going up.

What a radical idea -use VA property for – vets.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Veterans' Affairs Department