LOS ANGELES — Last month, a federal judge provided an overwhelming victory to veterans who filed a class-action lawsuit against VA that sought to force the department to build more housing for homeless veterans on its West Los Angeles Medical Center campus. The suit argued that the land for the campus had originally been gifted with the intention that it be used for veteran housing, and that VA had broken the law when it leased portions of the land to private companies over the years at the expense of the veterans they serve.
The case went to court last month and, after a 16-day bench trial, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter handed down a 124-page ruling that voids these long-standing leases and will require VA to build more permanent supportive housing in order to comply with federal statutes.
In 1888, 600 acres of land was deeded to the federal government to be used as an old soldier’s home in West Los Angeles. The home was built, and it existed in parallel with a VA hospital for decades. Following the post-Vietnam era, however, the home was slowly phased out and VA sold off pieces of the land until only 388 acres remains. The sales stopped in 2007 following congressional intervention.
VA also entered into renewable lease contracts with private organizations who have used the land to operate a private school, run a parking lot, drill for oil and, in the case of UCLA, build a baseball stadium.
Carter’s ruling holds all such leases in violation of federal law.
“Legislation allowed West VA to enter into leases but only those that served veterans. The VA, however, consistently transgressed those limits,” Carter said in his ruling.
“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 added. “After permitting these concrete structures to be built on veterans’ land, the VA now points to the waste that would be incurred by tearing them down. In effect, the VA has quietly sold off these lands just as surely as granting a quitclaim deed.”
Plaintiffs also demonstrated the need for an additional 1,800 supportive housing units at or near the West LA campus, as well as 750 temporary supportive housing units to be used while permanent facilities are constructed.
According to Carter, the veterans in the class action suit demonstrated that such housing on or near campus is necessary for veterans to receive care at the VA medical center.
One plaintiff, Laurieann Wright, who submitted testimony in the case, suffers from PTSD as well as a number of physical disabilities and medical conditions, including osteoporosis and a seizure disorder caused by multiple head injuries. Currently, she lives in VA-affiliated housing approximately 65-miles from campus. Wright, who requires specialty care only available at the West LA hospital, has to travel three hours in order to get to the campus. A ride-share program that existed when she was first placed in housing has been discontinued.
Even if the program was still in place, spending so long in a car or a train would be “excruciating with her disabilities,” Carter noted in his ruling.
“By failing to provide sufficient permanent supportive housing in a community setting on or near the [campus], and failing to provide temporary housing in the interim while permanent housing is constructed, the VA consistently denies veterans with serious mental illness and traumatic brain injury meaningful access to the community-based VA healthcare, mental healthcare, and other critical supportive services they need and for which they are eligible,” Carter wrote.
The judge went on to say that this failure by VA has led to the institutionalization of veterans, depriving them even further of healthcare and benefits. In his ruling, Carter quotes the testimony of one veteran, Joseph Fields, who said, “[I]t seemed like we’d fall into this cycle of, you know, going to jail, getting out of jail, going to the sidewalk, going back to jail, going to VA program, getting kicked out, going back to the block, going back to jail, going back to a VA program. That was a never-ending cycle for a decade for me. There was nothing for us to go to.”
The ruling gives VA six months in which to work with the plaintiff’s lawyers and a court-appointed monitor to develop a plan to construct the additional 1,800 units. It also gives VA 18 months to begin active construction on a “town center” that would serve as a social area for veterans to build relationships. The plan for the town center was originally developed by VA in 2016 following a previous lawsuit filed by homeless veteran but was never realized.