In 2021, soldiers and marines in Fort Sill, OK, helped with the VA’s “I Count” campaign to determine the number of homeless veterans. Now, the VA is hoping for a more accurate by-name list, something it plans to test by the end of the year. Photo by Marie Pihulic, Fort Sill Public Affairs.
LOS ANGELES — The trial has begun in a class-action lawsuit that is attempting to compel VA to build 4,000 units of subsidized housing for disabled veterans on its West Los Angeles campus.
The case, with the trial beginning last month, is a continuation of a decade long struggle between advocates for veterans experiencing homelessness and the department over the use of the campus. It shines a new light on the barriers standing between at-risk veterans and care.
VA’s West Los Angeles campus was originally donated in 1888 as a home for Civil War veterans. Following World War I, however, the campus gradually evolved from institutional housing to medical care. Over the decades, the medical center began to overshadow the Old Soldier’s Home.
In 1971, the hospital was significantly damaged by an earthquake and was demolished to make way for a new building. The residents of the Old Soldier’s Home were evicted to make room for a temporary hospital.
A 2016 court settlement required VA to create a master plan to build 1,200 units of subsidized housing for disabled veterans on the campus. Construction has begun only in the last few years, and only 233 units are currently filled.
That delay was the impetus for this new lawsuit, which is asking for 4,000 units—approximately the number of unhoused veterans living in Los Angeles. Advocates argue that providing housing on the same campus where veterans receive their medical care removes some of the most-intractable barriers facing disabled veterans.
“Numerous scientific studies demonstrate, consistent with common sense, that unhoused individuals with TBI and serious mental illness such as PTSD, schizophrenia, and severe depression can meaningfully access and benefit from physical and mental health services only after they are stabilized in permanent community-based housing readily accessible to appropriate services and support,” the lawsuit states. “Veterans have suffered grievously. Many have died. Over seven years after the VA committed to provide them permanent supportive housing, they are still suffering and dying on the streets of Los Angeles. Even under the VA’s most optimistic and recent plans, thousands of veterans will continue to live and die on the streets of Los Angeles for years to come.”
VA is fighting the suit, arguing that it puts an undue burden on the department and that there’s no evidence that all 4,000 units would be filled.
The plaintiffs have already achieved a partial victory. One complaint in the lawsuit argues that VA discriminates against disabled veterans by counting their disability benefits as earned income when determining whether they are eligible for subsidized housing.
In July, Judge David Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, stating in his ruling that, “Those who gave the most cannot receive the least.”
Last month, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and VA announced a change in policy to reflect the court decision.
“The days of a veteran having to choose between getting the VA benefits they deserve and the housing support they need are finally over,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a statement.
Meanwhile, legislators are questioning how VA is going about tallying the number of veterans experiencing homelessness. Since 2010, homelessness among veterans has decreased by 52%, though those numbers saw a 7% increase in 2023 from the year 2022.
However, those numbers are drawn from point in time (PIT) counts—head counts taken by shelters and organizations across the nation on a single night in January. The PIT count for 2023 was 35,574.
According to VA officials, the actual number of veterans experiencing homelessness in any given year can be four to five times greater than that one-night tally.
“The 36,000 veterans identified in the PIT count reflects an incident count, a snapshot view,” explained Thomas O’Toole, MD, VA under-secretary for Health for Clinical Services, at a House VA Committee hearing last month. “It does not measure how many people are going to be homeless the next day, the next week, or the next month.”
What VA needs in order to have an accurate count is a by-name list of every veteran experiencing homelessness in the United States, something that the department hopes to be testing by the end of the year.
“The by-name list is a game changer for us,” O’Toole explained. “It’s essential for going from aggregated data to actual data.”