After More Than a Decade of Delays and Appeals, the VA Is Once Again Told to Fulfill Its Mission
Homeless veterans have won their appeal in a class action lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs. A federal appeals court has ruled that the VA must finish the housing project it started building in Los Angeles to house thousands of veterans with severe disabilities.
A Campus Deeded to House Disabled Veterans
The 388-acre campus that is now home to the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center was bequeathed to the federal government by private owners in 1888. Those former owners requested that the land be used as a permanent home for disabled veterans.
Nowadays, there are veterans who live in the two nursing homes onsite or receive care at the hospital, doctors’ offices, or addiction treatment center. But there are also commercial agreements with private businesses that are willing to pay a pretty penny to lease a piece of the center’s valuable Brentwood location.
The VA has spent considerable time and effort trying to shrug off its responsibility to provide housing for disabled veterans through appeals and legal action that has dragged on for over a decade.
Circuit Judge Ana de Alba called this out in the opinion, writing, “This class action lawsuit, and its numerous appeals, demonstrates just how far the VA has strayed from its mission. There are now scores of unhoused veterans trying to survive in and around the greater Los Angeles area despite the acres of land deeded to the VA for their care,” and, “Rather than use the West Los Angeles VA Grounds as President Lincoln intended, the VA has leased the land to third-party commercial interests that do little to benefit the veterans.”
Those third-party commercial interests include agreements with UCLA, The Brentwood School, which rents the land for its multi-million-dollar athletic complex, complete with a stadium, fields, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and the oil and gas company Bridgeland Resources, which has been actively drilling for oil on the campus itself.
A Decade of Delays and Legal Resistance
This property has been the subject of litigation since 2011, and this latest appeal may not be the end of it.
The next step after the 9th circuit courts for determined parties is often an appeal to the Supreme Court. Imagine doing all that just to get out of building housing for homeless and disabled veterans, something that is well within your organization’s stated mission.
In response to this latest addition to a long string of appeals, the VA said it is reviewing the court’s decision. In the meantime, they are continuing to move forward with implementing an executive order to establish the National Center for Warrior Independence onsite. This process has so far been cloaked in secrecy and nondisclosure agreements.
What is the National Center for Warrior Independence?
What we do know about the so-called National Center for Warrior Independence is that it’s supposed to provide housing for up to 6,000 homeless veterans. That number has led to questions about the quality and location of the housing provided. After all, the housing the VA was ordered to build in 2011 contained only 1,200 units, and even the follow-up lawsuit brought by the VA’s glacially slow progress in building those units only mandated an additional 1,800, still leaving us far short of 6,000.
Even in the days when the Soldiers Home still stood on campus, before it was shut down in the 70s, it could house only about 4,000 veterans at a time. How will they fit in 2,000 to 3,000 more?
And the larger question- after years and years of dragging its feet when ordered by multiple courts to build housing for homeless and disabled veterans, why would the VA be suddenly so eager to complete that task now? Why are they giving up on this one without a fight, while at the same time continuing to fight for their legal right not to fulfill their organizational purpose?
Advocates fear that the change in attitude may signal a shift in the intended use of the shelters. While the previous court judgments call for the VA to build mainly permanent housing options, the executive order has not specified whether any housing provided will be permanent or temporary. Given how tight-lipped everyone involved is, the public is not likely to get an answer to that any time soon.
Los Angeles as a Destination for Homeless Veterans
A statement by VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz implied that the National Center for Warrior Independence would be a resource available to veterans nationwide:
“By establishing the National Center for Warrior Independence, we will turn the campus into a beacon of hope and a destination for homeless Veterans from across the nation who can find housing and support there and start their journey back to self-sufficiency,” the statement read.
Considering how contentious the issue of “busing” homeless people to other locations is already, particularly in California, this idea was met with a diverse array of differing reactions. Many agree that the ultimate goal of veteran housing programs is to reintegrate people back into society. It’s unclear how efficiently that can be done when they’re 3,000 miles away from the home they’re trying to reintegrate back into.
Homeless Veterans Continue to Pay the Price
Despite this recent court ruling, the future of housing for homeless veterans at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center is still unknown. Contractors continue to slowly build the housing they’ve been court-ordered to build, but at the same time, the legal battles continue to rage on. It wouldn’t be surprising if they took this all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to get out of their responsibility to disabled veterans, and there’s no telling how that would go.
In the meantime, an untold number of disabled veterans have been left homeless on the streets of Los Angeles in declining health while the VA drags its feet. The courts will decide whether this callousness is illegal or not, but the people already know it’s immoral.
Photo credit: Jesse Weinstein (JesseW), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons