A federal judge is expected to make a ruling early next month in a lawsuit alleging the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has failed in its duty to provide housing on its land in West Los Angeles for thousands of military veterans with disabilities.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter heard closing arguments Friday in the suit lodged in Los Angeles federal court against the VA by a group of veterans, challenging land lease agreements and seeking housing for veterans living on and around the VA’s West Los Angeles campus.
The November 2022 complaint seeks a court order giving the agency a deadline to create 750 shelter beds and 1,800 additional units of permanent housing units for veterans.
The outcome of the case could determine the VA’s responsibility to build more housing for homeless veterans, as well as the fate of several outside organizations’ leases on the 388-acre campus, including UCLA’s Jackie Robinson baseball stadium and the affluent Brentwood School’s athletic complex.
“You have 388 acres of property in West Los Angeles originally donated as a soldiers home and operated that way for 80 years,” Rob Reynolds, a veteran and plaintiffs’ advocate, told City News Service after the close of court Friday.
“Today you’ve got 233 units of permanent housing on the property and thousands of homeless veterans in Los Angeles — while (the VA) has been illegally leasing land at the campus.”
Carter, who is presiding over the case, has written that Los Angeles is “the homeless veterans capital of the United States.” He already ruled that the VA’s practice of leasing its land in West Los Angeles to third-party housing developers who use restrictive income limitations discriminates against veterans based on their disabilities, according to court papers.
When asked about the lawsuit, VA spokesman Gary J. Kunich has said that while the department doesn’t typically comment on pending or ongoing litigation, “we are proud of the work we are doing in Los Angeles and across the nation to end veteran homelessness.”
In an order issued last month, Carter granted partial summary judgment to plaintiffs on the issue of supportive housing leases.
The judge also denied the government’s motion for summary judgment on issues involving whether the VA has enforceable fiduciary duties to veterans under the charitable trust created when the area was bequeathed to the VA almost 150 years ago for the purpose of housing veterans with disabilities — Civil War veterans at first.
Last week, Carter, plaintiffs, attorneys and advocates toured the campus, starting before dawn. Reynolds said the 80-year-old judge — a Vietnam War veteran — spent six hours walking the entire campus.
In Los Angeles, the department completed 233 permanent supportive housing units on the West Los Angeles campus with 199 units occupied as of Sept. 15, 2023, Kunich said last year, with 134 tiny shelters, plus six units held for overnight drop-ins.
Reynolds said those numbers are clearly not adequate.
Kunich also described an array of services to address veteran housing instability and homelessness, including outreach and referral services, residential services and help with permanent housing.
The plaintiffs say they suffer serious disabilities such as post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. They seek to secure coordinated housing and health care services, along with permanent supportive housing, for all unhoused veterans with disabilities in the region.
Without such housing, “veterans with serious disabilities cannot access desperately needed mental and physical treatment services to which they are entitled,” according to the complaint.
The suit, filed by Los Angeles-based law firms Public Counsel, the Inner City Law Center and others, also seeks a court order prohibiting the VA from using the campus for any venture that does not primarily benefit veterans.
A 2011 lawsuit also addressed the land-use issue. Although the VA committed to construct 1,200 units of new permanent supportive housing — 770 of which should have been completed by last winter — virtually no such housing had been built as of 2022, according to Public Counsel.