The Brief

The first time John Follmer met a Purple Heart vet living on the streets after trying — and failing — to get VA benefits, it surprised him.

Not anymore.

Follmer has been doing homelessness outreach with L.A.'s Veteran Peer Access Network for three years. His goal is to help vets on the street tap into the array of economic, health and housing benefits they've earned. Follmer's seen many vets — including two more Purple Heart recipients — who have been wrongly turned away from the Department of Veterans Affairs or don't believe they're eligible.

"It's not the lack of resources. It's the abundance of discouragement," said Follmer.

Which might explain L.A. in a nutshell. Los Angeles has the largest number of homeless veterans, nearly 4,000 according to the annual count. L.A. also has a unique asset to help them: A 387-acre facility on some of the country's most expensive real estate: Brentwood, in West Los Angeles. The sprawling campus was donated as a home for Civil War veterans in 1887. In this century veterans groups have sued the VA for leasing parts of the campus out for things that had nothing to do with vets, like UCLA's baseball stadium, the private Brentwood School and other deals, some of which turned out to be criminal.

Veterans groups pointedly asked: If the campus could host a golf course and a working oil well and a bird sanctuary, why couldn't it build housing veterans? Veterans groups sued to drive that point home, and then VA settled the lawsuit in 2015 with an agreement that plaintiffs say hasn't been enforced. Now they're suing again and the case may go to trial next year. It's left vets like Follmer skeptical.

"You can't build anything on a foundation of neglect," he said, though he's encouraged by several recently opened new buildings to house veterans on the campus.

Construction on units has begun

As the sounds of construction echo through the north half of the VA campus, it's allowing some of the long-time critics to have some optimism.

"It's more difficult to say 'you're not doing anything' when we have more than 500 units already completed or in progress," said Steve Peck, a Vietnam vet who leads US Vets, part of a consortium developing buildings for housing on the campus.

"We're getting there," he said, walking into a newly renovated 1940s Mission-revival style building on campus that now holds 59 studios and one-bedroom apartments.

Veteran Deavin Sessom stays in a small hut-shelter at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Los Angeles, waiting for permanent housing the VA has been promising for years.

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Alex Welsh for NPR

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The building is exclusively for vets over age 62, half of them with severe mental illness. Peck said it filled up in less than four months.

"It's a nice home. They're proud to call it home," he said. "A lot of the veterans who came in here after they were here for two weeks went to the social workers and said, 'How long do I get to stay here?' And she said this is your home. Stay here as long as you want."

Peck said much of the work over the past five years was unseen — literally underground, updating 100-year-old infrastructure. Now the work is becoming visible, with 233 units already housing vets and 347 under construction. The next site slated to open is for women veterans with children.

A vision of affordable housing for vets in one of the richest parts of LA

The "master plan" is to build a real community with a village feel, including a café and restaurant, maybe an art center. An L.A. metro station stop is slated to open in 2027, which would integrate the campus with the rest of the city. By then developers hope to have completed most of the target 1,200 units of housing. It's a vision of a vibrant community of affordable housing for vets living in one of the richest parts of L.A.

It's also the focus of decades worth of well-earned suspicion, said Rob Reynolds, an Iraq vet. When he hears about shiny new restaurants, or a massive park-and-ride garage for commuters at the new metro station, it sounds like history repeating itself.

Rob Reynolds, an Army veteran, poses for a portrait at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

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Alex Welsh for NPR

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"A lot of these entities that are on the land, that are unrelated to veteran housing or healthcare, have got whatever their wants are over the needs of the veterans," he said.

Reynolds helped galvanize a community of homeless vets camping out at the VA's gates in an area known as "veterans row" about three years ago. He said the VA still felt like a place that would always find a way to tell you "no."

"There was no 24-hour shelter. So you have veterans that were showing up in the afternoon being like, 'Hey, I need a place to stay.' And they would tell them, 'Oh no, come back tomorrow or the following day. But you can't stay on the property tonight.' Then they would end up out in the street," said Reynolds.

"They finally build up enough courage to ask for help and then get turned away. You just sever the trust and then it makes it that much harder to get them in the next time," he said.

The vets outside the gates with U.S. flags draped on their tents brought public pressure, and VA brought veterans row inside the campus. It's now a compound of 140 basic huts; six of them — soon to be 12 — are available 24/7 for vets who turn up.

Tiny homes sit adjacent to what was previously Veterans Row on the campus of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

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Alex Welsh for NPR

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In September, Robert Canas, an Air Force vet who had been on veterans row, moved into a studio apartment in one of the new buildings. Canas had been homeless for about five years.

"I was drinking heavily. Just to fall asleep on the streets I was drinking a lot," he said. "It wasn't till I got here that I got sobered up."

Canas got therapy at the VA and quit drinking about two years ago. His new apartment is subsidized so it only costs him $60 per month. Despite all that, he hasn't completely changed his opinion about the VA.

"What's sad is still finding all the obstacles here at the VA," he said.

Robert Canas poses for a portrait in his new apartment at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.

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Alex Welsh for NPR

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Disability miscounted as income

Sitting on the couch in his new place is one example of what Canas means: Army vet Joshua Erickson. He lost a leg to a landmine in Afghanistan and is rated 100% disabled by the VA, which means he makes too much income to get a housing voucher from Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

"On top of my service connected [disability] money, I get Social Security," Erickson said with an uncomprehending pause. "I make too much money."

He's up in Canas' new apartment to use the Wi-Fi and hang out indoors - he's living in a hut on the compound of what used to be veterans row. Erickson said he'd like to go to school and learn to make prostheses like the one he's wearing. He used to have three different prosthetic legs, but the others got lost or stolen while he was on the street.

After Erickson steps out, Canas vents.

Josh Erickson poses for a portrait at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

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Alex Welsh for NPR

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"He stepped on a landmine trying to rescue another soldier. I get this beautiful apartment ... and he can't live here," Canas said. "And he even says he feels like he's not wanted here by both the community and the VA. They want you homeless and desperate."

Canas said this while he himself lives in a VA-provided apartment and gets VA care. Officials know the VA has to fix this trust problem.

"We have people who are getting harmed now because they are afraid to get services or they're convinced that the VA is out to get them or is evil," said John Kuhn. He's the deputy medical center director for VA Greater Los Angeles and also the self-described "homelessness guy."

Kuhn is a social worker with 30 years experience on the issue, and he previously led a successful rapid rehousing program at VA.

"I'm asking those veterans to get up and try again. You have a home here. You have an opportunity here to reach out to get the service you are entitled to. We are here. One third of our staff are veterans," said Kuhn.

John Kuhn, Deputy Medical Center Director of the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

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Alex Welsh for NPR

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Kuhn said it's absurd that veterans like Josh Erickson are caught in red tape, that their VA disability is counting as income. The VA has been working with the Treasury Department and HUD to change that, Kuhn says, but it may take action by Congress.

That's hard, but not impossible. Despite Washington gridlock, Congress comes together more often on veterans issues, including the approval of hundreds of millions of dollars for the West L.A. campus. With the construction finally happening all over campus, Kuhn allows himself some optimism.

"We have the resources, we have the team. There's no reason for any of our veterans in L.A. to be homeless," he said.

For years now, he said, L.A. has been housing more vets than any other VA in the country but not keeping up with the number who fall into homelessness.

If this campus can stay on track, Kuhn is hoping to finally get ahead of that curve.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were ensconced in the Orion space capsule when they dropped into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. Friday. The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone to help recover the crew.

The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone and will help recover the crew. A team will head out to the floating capsule and install an inflatable raft just below Orion's side hatch. The crew will be examined by a flight surgeon, then helped out of the capsule. From the transport ship, they will hitch a ride back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Risk of reentry

There's always risk when returning from space. Glover said that he has been thinking about this portion of the mission since he was selected for it back in 2023, and he's been looking forward to it ever since.

"We have to get back," he said from the Orion capsule Wednesday. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories, and, gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through."

To get back, the capsule must hit the atmosphere at a precise angle.

"Let's not beat around the bush," said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead flight director. "We have to hit that angle correctly. Otherwise, we're not going to have a successful reentry."

All eyes will be on the heat shield — this is the piece of hardware beneath the capsule that protects the crew from the extreme temperatures during reentry. NASA tested it out on Artemis I, the previous, uncrewed mission, and found that the heat shield wasn't performing as designed.

NASA mission planners and the Artemis II team worked on a way to mitigate that risk. Instead of "skipping" through the atmosphere like Artemis I, this mission would hit the atmosphere steeper and faster, limiting the time the spacecraft spends in those fiery, energetic moments of reentry.

"It's 13 minutes of things that have to go right," said Radigan. "I have a whole checklist in my head that we're going through of all the things that have to happen."

Mission success

The Artemis II mission is a key flight test for Orion, and thus far, mission managers have been pleased with the results. The spacecraft has taken humans farther from Earth than they've ever been, breaking a record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The crew tested the manual control of the spacecraft, which will be needed for future missions that will dock with a lunar landing system. The mission tested the spacecraft's life support systems and ability to keep four astronauts comfortable within the confined space.

Artemis II returned humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program over 50 years ago. And while some astronauts back then did see the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew was able to observe it from a vantage point never before seen by humans. Their images and geological notes will help better determine what the moon is made of and where it came from.

While some of the astronauts' observations may help scientists understand the distant past, others will help mission managers better plan for the future. Case in point: The crew tested out the very first toilet to go to the moon, and it quickly ran into issues during flight. Multiple times during the trip, the crew had to use manual urinals instead. The issue, NASA said, was not with the toilet itself, but the system that dumps the urine overboard when it gets full.

The Orion capsule will return to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the mission, where engineers will examine the spacecraft after its flight, including a closer look at the spacecraft's plumbing. The team will be picking apart the spacecraft to see how it performed — and make any necessary changes ahead of the next mission, Artemis III, set to launch next year.

An L.A. city official sounded the alarm Friday that homeless service providers may go bankrupt or have to lay off staff over major reimbursement delays that still haven’t been fixed by the region’s homeless services agency — despite promises two years ago to fix it.

The L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) is late in reimbursing more than $50 million to shelter, housing and other service providers — much of which is more than 90 days overdue — according to a report it issued last month. One service provider said LAHSA is more than 90 days late in reimbursing more than $12 million in invoices to their organization.

”Everybody involved with contracting is frustrated, is angry, is exhausted," said John Wickham, the lead city staff member who presented about the issue to the city council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee on Friday. Wickham said the frustrations are shared by all of the city departments that deal with LAHSA, as well as LAHSA staff and service providers.

Wickham said he’s heard that some service providers may be considering layoffs or even considering filing for bankruptcy because of the delayed payments.

“ When payment delays occur, [service providers] are forced to make difficult decisions that everyone is experiencing right now,” said David Carpio, the chief operating officer for Veteran Social Services, Inc.

Those decisions, he said, include reducing available beds, limiting intake of new people for services, increasing wait times, ending projects — which he said leads to increased homelessness and burden on the city for emergency services calls.

Sharon Sandow, a spokesperson for the city housing department, said the department has paid LAHSA upfront — known as “advances” — so it has cash on hand to pay service providers. Sandow said the city has, at times, borrowed money from the General Fund to make advance payments to LAHSA.

Wickham said advanced payments from the city to LAHSA were being passed “ back and forth and around and around in circles.”

“ I actually haven't been able to get to the bottom of that myself,” Wickham said when asked why that’s happening. “Nobody [can] understand that.”

Wickham said he and colleagues have held over 100 meetings with officials to try to understand how the city contracts for homeless services, but some aspects were still unclear.

Officials promised to get payments back on track two years ago by streamlining their processes. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has chaired the council’s homelessness committee for the past few years, said on Friday the city is “stuck” and has not fixed the issue.

“We don't have the ability at the city to manage this process any better than we did last year or the year before. We have just not moved forward at all,” she added. “It is extraordinarily frustrating, and those same issues persist at LAHSA that we've been discussing. So we're literally in the same place that we've been for two years.”

What LAHSA leaders say

The agency’s CEO, Gita O’Neill, told the committee the delays are “unacceptable” and that LAHSA is working with a consultant to improve its processes. LAHSA’s chief financial officer, Janine Trejo, said LAHSA “is accepting responsibility,” while she also pointed at the city for what she described as delays in the city finalizing its agreements to fund LAHSA and payments to LAHSA.

Mayor Karen Bass oversees the city agencies that pay LAHSA and is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, which she has served on for more than two years. She did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson on Friday’s discussion of the payment delays. Raman is running against Bass in the June primary election for mayor.

What’s next

Following up on City Council requests from years ago, the council committee plans to decide next Wednesday whether to recommend pulling all of the city’s funding out of LAHSA and having a different agency manage it. It will then go to the full City Council for a decision.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is expected to consider, a motion aimed at assessing the impact of the growing number of data centers in the region.

The centers have drawn criticism for their potential health and environmental effects on surrounding communities, and for the amount of energy they use.

Around the country, the growth in the number of data centers — which house servers, storage systems and other technology — has been driven in part by the proliferation of artificial intelligence, which has drastically increased the need for critical internet technology infrastructure.

There are already more than 70 established data centers in the county, with that number likely to grow as developers approach cities and the county to create additional facilities, according to the motion authored by Supervisor Hilda Solis.

“Establishing local regulatory oversight of data center placement and operation is needed to ensure community and environmental health and safety is protected,” the motion states. “As newer centers expand in scale and complexity, their energy use and environmental footprint is also increasing, with little community engagement on the potential impacts on residents’ health and wellbeing.”

A representative of the data storage industry raised concerns about the motion, which calls for a moratorium on data center development in unincorporated L.A. County that would be initiated “as applicable.”

“What concerns me most with the motion is the inclusion of a moratorium,” said Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition. “That sends a strong signal as to whether they are welcome in those areas.”

Data centers ‘underregulated’

Solis’ motion calls on various departments including public health, public works and fire to provide findings regarding the health, environmental and safety impacts of data centers on neighboring communities, the impact on electrical and water resources and a review of how other jurisdictions around the county are regulating data centers within urban areas.

It also calls for a community education and outreach campaign to inform residents on potential impacts of advancing technologies.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, has said the data center industry is under-regulated and accelerating at a speed, scale and concentration that is impacting energy systems, water supplies, air quality, community health, land use and public finances.

A recent report by the group said state and local policymakers are at the forefront of this expansion, “uniquely positioned to guide it in ways that reflect local priorities and community needs, especially in the absence of federal guidelines.”

A fact sheet from the council said unrestricted buildout of data centers could come with big consequences including:

• Higher household water and energy bills
• Water scarcity 
• Increased water, air and noise pollution

The motion by Solis quotes a 2026 report by Community & Environmental Defense Services that showed pollutants emitted from data centers may adversely impact the health of individuals living as far as 0.6 miles from the site.

Boender, of the Data Center Coalition, said concerns about data centers have been overstated. In addition, she said data centers have “a lot of positive economic impacts associated with them.” She cited a Pricewaterhouse report that found one job in a data center creates six jobs in the broader economy.

Support for state legislation

In addition to asking county staff to assess the impact of data centers, the Solis motion calls on the county to support state legislation that directs the Public Utilities Commission to create a special rate structure for large-scale energy users and requires these users to pay for upfront transmission or distribution upgrades.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to consider the motion during its regular meeting Tuesday. For more information, click here.

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the leading candidates for California governor, came under increasing pressure Friday to drop out of the race following a report by the San Francisco Chronicle that he sexually assaulted a former female staffer. Swalwell denied the allegations.

Several other Democratic candidates called for him to immediately drop out, including Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Controller Betty Yee, who called the allegations “sickening.”

Swalwell had racked up endorsements across the Democratic establishment, and at least one labor union and one politician who was backing him suspended their support swiftly Friday afternoon.

The Chronicle reported that a woman who worked in Swalwell’s Castro Valley office claimed to have had sexual encounters with him while she worked for him and alleged he sexually assaulted her when she was intoxicated. The report comes after weeks of rumors that Swalwell had inappropriate interactions with staff for years. On one instance in 2019, the woman said she became intoxicated after Swalwell asked her for drinks and woke up in his bed in a hotel room, feeling the effects of intercourse.

"These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the frontrunner for governor. For nearly 20 years, I have served the public — as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women. I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action,” Swalwell said in a statement Friday.

In recent weeks, two social media influencers began posting online what many people had considered rumors about Swalwell’s behavior with women. The influencers said they had spoken with several young women with whom Swalwell had behaved inappropriately. CalMatters has not independently verified the claims.

Swalwell pushed back hard against the allegations this week, telling reporters at a town hall in Sacramento on Tuesday that they are “false,” that he had “never” had a sexual relationship with anyone who worked for him. He suggested the allegations were politically motivated.

“I don’t want there to be any question in the minds of Californians,” he said. “I’m offering myself also as somebody who is fearlessly going to stand up for Californians on the toughest issues and not flinch.”

An attorney for Swalwell sent cease-and-desist letters to some of the women, one of the influencers, Arielle Fodor, wrote online. The attorney, Elias Dabaie, did not respond to a request for comment on the Chronicle story but confirmed to other news outlets the letter’s authenticity.

On Thursday night, Swalwell canceled a planned town hall in Southern California. Swalwell began calling groups that have endorsed him Friday morning to tell them of an upcoming story in the Chronicle, and denying the story, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to CalMatters.

At least four of his senior campaign staffers, including a top consultant who helped him court labor support, abruptly resigned before the news report.

Swalwell’s top two Democratic competitors in governor’s race, Tom Steyer and Katie Porter, on Friday avoided calling for him to drop out, though both issued statements commending the woman in the Chronicle story for coming forward.

Some groups that have endorsed Swalwell declined to comment on the allegations when reached by CalMatters, saying their board members needed time to digest the news.

For others, the exodus was swift. U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Los Angeles Democrat who chaired Swalwell’s campaign, resigned from the role Friday and called on Swalwell to drop out. He called the allegations “the ugliest and most serious accusations imaginable.”

“My involvement in any campaign begins and ends with trust,” he said in a statement. “The congressman should leave the race now so there can be full accountability without doubt, distraction, or delay.”

The powerhouse union California Teachers Association immediately suspended its support of Swalwell, calling the allegations against him “incredibly disturbing and unacceptable” in a statement by President David Goldberg. “Our elected board will be meeting as soon as possible to follow our union’s democratic process to determine next steps.”

Another heavyweight union that endorsed him, Service Employees International Union California, suspended at least one ad buy in support of Swalwell following the accusations.

The California Medical Association, another backer, was convening an emergency meeting of the board, and “takes these allegations extremely seriously,” said spokesperson Erin Mellon.

CalMatters' Yue Stella Yu contributed to this report.

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