The Brief

Veterans Affairs administrators and advocates are urging federal officials to change a rule that disqualifies some L.A.-area unhoused veterans from government-funded housing.

The rule has kept hundreds of unhoused veterans with serious disabilities — caused by their military service — from living in apartments on the sprawling 400-acre West L.A. Veterans Affairs campus. Federal housing officials have said their hands are legally tied.

The problem isn’t limited to just Los Angeles. VA officials told LAist that cities across California — and the country — are dealing with the same limitations. They include San Diego, Fresno, San Francisco, Oakland, Reno, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and New Orleans.

The national problem stems from a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rule that counts veterans’ federal disability stipends as income. That money, combined with Social Security, can put their income level just high enough to disqualify them from housing.

VA officials and advocates interviewed by LAist, along with several local congressional representatives, say the rule doesn’t make sense and hurts those who have sacrificed greatly for their country.

“We're…penalizing those veterans who need help the most,” said John Kuhn, deputy director of the West L.A. VA Medical Center.

Kuhn said the system "defies logic": The most injured and disabled veterans can’t access federally-funded housing.

While some progress has been made on the issue this year, many veterans remain shut out of VA apartments due to their disability stipends.

Too much income — barely

It is very easy for a veteran to lose out on housing intended for them. Here’s how: The most significantly disabled veteran receives compensation of $43,463 a year for their disability. But to qualify for a HUD housing voucher in Los Angeles, a veteran’s income can’t exceed $44,150.

A disabled veteran can surpass that razor-thin margin of eligibility, $687, if they receive additional income from Social Security benefits, for example.

And some veterans receive extra disability stipends — for example, for the loss of use of body parts, such as blindness or an amputation — that push them over the $44,150 limit.

Previously, the income limit to be eligible for a housing voucher was $26,500, excluding even more veterans from VA housing. The limit was increased in May.

But even with the new, higher limit, VA homelessness executive Keith Harris estimates that at least 230 unhoused veterans in L.A. still have too much income to qualify for the housing.

In an email, a spokesperson for the West Los Angeles VA public affairs office characterized the number of veterans locked out of housing as “small.”

The spokesperson added: “The VA remains concerned and vigilant as the Veterans who are impacted face significant clinical needs that warrant greater attention.”

There are about 3,900 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County, according to the latest point-in-time count conducted in January.

Rob Reynolds speaks with the producer and host of How To LA at the West LA VA campus near the tiny homes.

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Unhoused veteran says he makes too much to qualify

Deavin Sessom, 67, served in the Army shortly after the Vietnam War. He told LAist he experienced serious trauma, leading to PTSD and depression, which in turn lead to a divorce, and losing his family and housing in 2013.

Sessom has been trying to qualify for housing on the West L.A. VA campus.

“The reason they won’t house me is because I make too much money,” said Sessom, who collects both disability compensation and Social Security.

He was one of about 50 veterans who lived in an encampment outside the campus, known as Veterans Row, that was shut down in late 2021. Sessom said he saw two of his friends stabbed earlier this year, in incidents reported by the L.A. Times and KCRW.

When apartments on the campus became available in 2017, Sessom told LAist, he was promised he would be one of the first to get housing. But as others in the encampment slowly trickled into housing, he’s been left in a tiny home — a stopgap measure provided by the VA, similar to a shed — until he gets permanent housing.

Sessom worries about safety issues that come with staying there — last year, 11 of the tiny home shelters burned down, including his own.

Following his divorce, Sessom now leans on the veteran community as his family. He said housing on campus would allow him to be connected to them.

The reading room in newly refurbished building that houses unhoused veterans at the West L.A. VA campus, seen during a grand opening tour on May 2, 2023. Standing in the center of the photo is Jason Pu, the top administrator in California for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

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The case for changing the rules

For years, veterans and their supporters have been pleading with HUD to exclude disability accommodations from income calculations in order to include more disabled veterans.

Kuhn pointed out that these benefits are not considered income when veterans file their taxes. “So why are we calling it income for the purposes of housing?" he said.

Service-connected disability compensation is directly tied to the level of injury suffered by veterans during their military service. This includes injuries such as PTSD, traumatic brain injury, amputation or gastrointestinal issues. Finding employment and housing are just some of the challenges faced by veterans with disabilities.

Veterans with PTSD are especially prone to isolation and distrust of others, which can further strain their housing situation.

The inside of a living area and kitchen at new housing for unhoused veterans at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus, during a tour on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.

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Congressmembers, including Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, share the concerns of VA officials like Kuhn.

In March, Takano wrote in a letter to VA leaders: "Veterans who are homeless are often on the streets not as a result of extremely limited income, but severe trauma directly related to their military service."

Takano emphasized that the current practice of creating permanent supportive housing across the VA system for extremely low-income veterans inadvertently limits access to quality, subsidized housing for high-needs veterans who may have more income as a result of disabilities from their military service.

To address this issue, Takano has called on HUD and the Treasury Department to exclude veteran disability compensation when determining HUD voucher eligibility.

But HUD has said its hands are tied because of the way the law is written.

In 2016, Congress passed the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act, which directed HUD to exclude two other types of veteran compensation as income. HUD has interpreted the law to mean that disability compensation — which is not one of the two exclusions — should be included as income.

Additionally, HUD officials have said that such a change would result in veterans with disabilities paying much less toward their rent than non-veterans with disabilities, despite receiving much higher disability compensation.

That concern stems from the fact that people who live in HUD-funded housing pay a percentage of their income as rent.

“Veteran disability benefits can in some cases be significantly higher than other disability benefits,” wrote Kimberly A. McClain, HUD’s assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations, in a May letter to Congressman Mike Levin.

“Excluding all veteran disability benefits would result in those families paying little or nothing for rent while [non-veteran] disabled families with a much smaller benefit would still be required to pay a substantially higher amount as their share of the rent,” McClain added.

Kuhn said the root of the problem is that the HUD rules were designed for the general population, and rely on an income threshold to ensure that affordable housing is prioritized for people who need it most.

But Kuhn said veteran housing doesn’t need the same kind of rationing because the VA has sufficient resources to serve every homeless veteran. "To create these artificial barriers only makes it more difficult to serve homeless veterans,” he said.

“We need to have somewhat different rules because veterans have served their country and are getting this disability income for their service because of what they experienced,” Kuhn said.

Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat whose district includes the West L.A. VA campus, said legislation is being developed to direct HUD to exclude disability compensation when determining eligibility for veteran housing vouchers. Working alongside Reps. Takano and Ted Lieu (D-Santa Monica), Sherman said he is hopeful for progress. To date, no bill has been introduced.

The inside of a bedroom at new housing for unhoused veterans at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus, during a tour on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.

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Jumbled VA priorities

Veteran Rob Reynolds, who advocates for veterans experiencing homelessness, questions why this income limit problem wasn’t dealt with years ago when the VA was originally planning the housing. He noted VA leaders have historically given priority over department land to “baseball stadiums, oil drilling, parking lot deals, dog parks” that have been allowed to lease the space – which a federal judge found was illegal.

In the 1960s and 70s, the VA stopped housing veterans in need on its land and began renting parts of the property to other entities.

NPR reported in 2012, before a homeless housing master plan was created, that the VA was taking in between $28 million and possibly more than $40 million a year in rent.

A lack of movement on veteran homelessness

VA officials are running about four years behind on promises to create 1,200 homes for veterans at the campus — so far just 233 units have been built.

Those promises were made in 2015 to settle an ACLU lawsuit alleging the VA was illegally renting the land for private purposes like TV set storage, a hotel laundry facility and a parking service.

VA officials have said they would speed up construction if Congress authorized money for it and that they currently don’t have the authority to move forward.

Reynolds expressed doubt about the government's ability to address homelessness given the four-year delay.

Why the lack of movement? He thinks it’s primarily a lack of will by elected officials. “There’s no shortage of infrastructure,” Reynolds said, “and look at how difficult it is to get them housing.”

He pointed out that the VA possesses vast amounts of land and empty buildings, and said if Congress allocated funds specifically for housing construction, it could eliminate the need for income restrictions altogether.

It’s a real contrast, he said, to how quickly he saw the U.S. government build infrastructure when he served in the Iraq War.

“If you can do this in a theater of combat, and set up housing and take care of people right away, why can you not do this in the United States?" Reynolds said. "It's ridiculous.”

Several fires are burning across Southern California, with some destroying structures, threatening homes and charring pristine landscapes.

Warm weather and Santa Ana wind conditions have hampered firefighting efforts and are expected to continue through Wednesday this week. The National Weather Service forecasts cooler weather and "May gray" through the weekend.

Here's a roundup of some of the fires burning now.

(All dates refer to today, Tuesday, May 19, unless otherwise noted)

Santa Rosa Island Fire (Santa Barbara County)

• CalFire incident page
• Channel Islands National Park on social media
• Acreage: About 17,000 as of 5 p.m.
• Containment: 0% as of 5 p.m.
• Cause: KTLA and other outlets have reported a man whose boat shipwrecked fired a rescue flare that sparked the fire.

The fire is burning in Channel Island National Park territory. Firefighters traveled by boat with their equipment to get to the island, according to news reports. The island is home to rare and endangered plants and animals.

Sandy Fire (Ventura County)

• CalFire incident page
• Ventura County emergency website (includes evacuation information)
• Acreage: About 1,700 as of 5 p.m.
• Containment: 5% as of 5 p.m.
• Cause: Under investigation

CalFire reported about 2:40 p.m. Tuesday that lessening winds allowed "firefighters to take full advantage of improved weather to strengthen containment lines and continue aggressive suppression efforts. Crews remain actively engaged both on the ground and in the air to gain additional containment and keep the fire within its current perimeter."

The fire started Monday in the southern part of Simi Valley. It eventually spread eastward toward L.A. County communities in the San Fernando Valley, but overnight conditions were favorable to firefighters, CalFire said. Several communities were under evacuation orders and warnings, and schools in the area were closed.

Bain Fire (Riverside County)

• CalFire incident page (includes evacuation information)
• Social media updates
• Acreage: About 900 as of 5:30 p.m.
• Containment: 0% as of 5:30 p.m.
• Cause: Under investigation

The fire was first reported around noon Tuesday, according to CalFire, near Jurupa Valley (east of the 15 Freeway and south of the 60). CBS News Los Angeles reported that four people have been injured.

Verona Fire (Riverside County)

• CalFire incident page (includes evacuation information)
• Social media updates
• Acreage: About 200 as of 5 p.m.
• Containment: 0% as of 5 p.m.
• Cause: Under investigation

Burro Fire (Angeles National Forest)

• CalFire incident page
• Social media updates
• Acreage: 30
• Containment: 70% as of about 5 p.m.
• Cause: Under investigation

The fire started Monday in a mountainous area north of the San Gabriel Reservoir.

Listen to our Big Burn podcast

Fire resources and tips

Check out LAist's wildfire recovery guide.

Prepare for the next disaster:

• Fire season is here. Make sure you're signed up for these alerts
• Every day is now fire season. Let's get you ready for the next wildfire
• Yes, wildfires are getting worse. The history that got us to this moment

If you have to evacuate:

• Why fire officials don't want you to stay and defend your home
• How to get packed up
• How to leave your house
• What evacuation terms mean and how to sign up for alerts

Navigating fire conditions:

• How to drive in high winds and fire danger
• How to prep for power outages
• How to navigate poor air quality

How to help yourself and others:

• Resources for fire victims, evacuees and first responders
• If you want to help fire victims, resist the urge to volunteer
• How to help find lost pets

How to start the recovery process:

• What to do — and not do — when you get home after a wildfire
• How to make an insurance claim
• How to safely clean up wildfire ash

What to do for your kids:

• How to talk to children about wildfires and losing a home
• What parents should know about wildfire air quality

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California’s community colleges have been battling fraudulent students for years, trying to prevent scammers from stealing financial aid money.

Recent data shows the colleges’ efforts finally may be working.

Last spring, CalMatters reported that colleges were seeing unprecedented reports of fraud, with scammers stealing millions more dollars of student aid than in any previous period, according to reports submitted by colleges to California’s Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

Now fewer scammers are bypassing colleges’ vetting systems, according to monthly reports, and school administrators say they’re better, though still not perfect, at detecting and preventing fraud.

After CalMatters reported on the rise in fraud last year, Republican U.S. Congress members called for a federal investigation, a Democratic state legislator launched a state audit and later, California’s Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office approved a new ID verification policy for students. Colleges now are more vigilant about policing fraud, said Jory Hadsell, an executive in technology initiatives for the chancellor’s office, who pointed to better filtering practices and new software to detect fraud.

Between January and March 2025, scammers stole nearly $5.6 million in federal student aid and over $900,000 in state aid. By comparison, this spring colleges have reported losing just under $1.5 million in federal student aid and about $330,000 in state aid to fraudsters.

Last spring was “really the peak,” Hadsell said. He said he anticipates the end-of-year total in 2026 to be “significantly lower” than last year.

Even in the worst months, such as last spring, the money distributed to scammers is less than 1% of the total financial aid distributed to community college students in California. Students use the money to help pay for tuition, books and the cost of daily living expenses, such as rent, transportation and food.

But any fraud, however small, is unacceptable, said Chris Ferguson, executive vice chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives. “The ultimate goal for our system is zero.”

Some anti-fraud policies have been slow to take effect. The California Community Colleges Board of Governors voted nearly a year ago to require ID verification for all students, but only about 50% of college students are doing it as of this month. Hadsell said the delays arose in part because of complications verifying information of students under 18 years old, who represent a growing demographic for the community colleges. He said ID verification, which is currently optional, will become mandatory on July 1.

The board also voted to “explore” the option of charging students an application fee of no more than $10, but with the rates of fraud declining and other solutions that seem to work, the chancellor’s office is no longer pursuing that option, Ferguson said.

After blaming California officials, the U.S. Department of Education, which shares responsibility for administering federal aid and detecting fraud, said it would implement a “screening process” for applicants. It was supposed to take effect last fall but didn’t launch until last month, according to press releases from the department and statements from the California Student Aid Commission. CalMatters reached out to the U.S. Education Department five times over the last 12 months, seeking clarification, but the department has refused to respond to questions about delays with the screening process.

When more than a third of college applicants are fake

After classes suddenly moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office saw an increase in financial aid fraud on their application portal, CCCApply, which is used by nearly every student as the first step in applying to community college.

In 2021, the chancellor’s office suspected roughly 20% of applicants were fraudulent.

The estimate was higher in January 2024, around 25%. Last spring, it was 34%, though some schools saw much higher rates.

After they apply through CCCApply, students get filtered locally at their college of choice. In the Los Rios Community College District, which represents Sacramento, college officials suspected 64% of local applications from January to March 2025 were fraudulent. And that was after the state already vetted them through its portal, said Gabe Ross, a spokesperson for the district. The San Diego and Los Angeles community college districts also reported spikes in the number of fraudulent applications around the same time.

CalMatters reached out to the five largest community college districts for an interview. The Rancho Santiago Community College District, which includes parts of Orange County, did not provide sufficient data to draw conclusions about trends in fraud. The State Center Community College District, which represents schools in Fresno and Madera counties, did not respond to CalMatters’ questions.

Monthly data reports to the chancellor’s office show that once detected, most scammers who applied to community colleges were then caught and kicked out before they could apply for financial aid, but some succeeded.

This year, both Sacramento and San Diego community colleges say they’re seeing fewer attempts at fraud and are getting better at stopping those who try. The San Diego Community College District is now manually screening for fraudulent applications twice a week and is finalizing a contract with a company to help improve its detection software.

CCCApply has improved its filtering process, which helped reduce fraud attempts at Sacramento area colleges, said Ross. “When we talked about such a complex dynamic challenge, it's always hard to identify what's the one thing that sort of moved the needle. The truth is that we needed support from the feds, we needed support from the (chancellor’s) office, and we needed to invest in tools locally.”

This spring, he said the district flagged about 12% of college applications as suspect.

Using AI to detect AI 

Measuring fraud is, by definition, imprecise. If a scammer is truly successful, colleges have no way to identify that fraud.

For a long time, administrators assumed bots enrolling in online classes were responsible for most fraudulent attempts. Yet teachers, students and financial aid administrators say some of the scams are more sophisticated now and are coming from real people impersonating students. Many fraudulent applications to Los Angeles’ community colleges have real names, dates of birth, and addresses that are likely “leaked or stolen,” said Nicole Albo-Lopez, the deputy chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District.

In San Diego, Victor DeVore, dean of student services, said the college district only requires ID verification for students flagged as fraudulent. At that point they must prove their identity, either in person or through Zoom. Once, a potentially fraudulent student appeared on Zoom and presented a valid-looking ID that matched their face, but DeVore’s team noticed that the student’s IP address was odd. “One minute they’re logging in from Nairobi, the next minute they'll be logging in from Virginia,” he said, adding that the use of AI, virtual private networks (VPNs) or other technology has made fraud harder to detect.

Students’ personal data is supposed to be private, but school districts and education technology companies are frequently hacked. Last week, Canvas — one of the go-to learning platforms for California’s community colleges, University of California and California State University campuses — went offline temporarily due to a major hack. Its parent company, Instructure, said last week that it reached an agreement with the hackers to relinquish students’ data.

The state has turned to AI to fight fraud. Last summer, the state chancellor’s office negotiated a multimillion dollar contract with N2N Services Inc., enabling any college in the state to access the company’s software at a discounted rate. The software uses AI to detect potentially fraudulent applicants. Colleges are not required to use it, and so far, only about two-thirds do. Some districts, such as the Los Angeles Community College District, use a different fraud detection software, known as Socure.

Colleges and the state chancellor’s office continue to face political pressure and scrutiny of their approach to fraud. Last month, the U.S. Education Department said it had prevented more than $171 million in fraud in California after implementing a new policy regarding ID verification. Hadsell, with the state chancellor’s office, said the federal policy had no impact on California’s colleges. “They issued some interim guidance last year that basically said you should at least have a Zoom call with students and have them show an ID when you're approving their aid. And those were things that were already happening. It was not, you know, some new thing at least for most of our colleges.”

Kiran Kodithala, the CEO of N2N, which collects its own data on fraud at community colleges, said the education department’s claim makes no sense.

“I don’t see how $171 million in fraud in California can occur,” he said. “There’s no basis for those numbers. We’re not seeing anything remotely close.” Kodithala estimates that N2N has prevented over $34 million in fraud since last summer, though his platform is not yet in use by all of California's 116 community colleges.

Collecting more precise data may take months or years. U.S. Representative Young Kim, who represents parts of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, launched the effort for a federal investigation last spring, but her office could not provide any updates or confirm that an investigation was in fact underway. At the state level, the Legislature last year approved conducting an audit of how California’s community colleges handled fraud but the findings won’t be released until this summer.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.