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.

A 2-acre slice of parkland that runs diagonally between 8th Street and 10th Street near Wilson High School is slated to get new trees, landscaping and seating — a project that will complete its transformation from an old railway right-of-way into a welcoming greenspace.

The land was once used by Pacific Electric, whose Red Car trains used to slash diagonally across the area from Wrigley to the Colorado Lagoon. For years, Long Beach has been slowly converting a 9.2-acre stretch of the former railway into parkland between 4th Street and Park Avenue to 11th Street and Loma.

This portion, called the 10th Street Greenbelt, runs between Termino and Grand avenues. It was outfitted with a 900-foot concrete path in 2022. This next phase will add 48 Redbud, Oak, and Sycamore trees, native shrubs, solar lighting, boulder and bench seating, and several granite auxiliary trails that connect the surrounding neighborhoods to the path. There are no plans for restrooms or tables, officials said.

The city of Long Beach provided this rendering of plans for the revamped 10th Street Greenbelt.

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Courtesy the city of Long Beach

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Plans were informed largely by a survey and feedback gathered over the last four years by the Greenbelt Heights Neighborhood Association. Officials say surveys consistently pointed out a need for more seating, native plants and improved drainage in the nearby neighborhoods.

Sharon Turner, the association’s president, said it’s been a 15-year effort that originally inspired the creation of the neighborhood group. For years, the path was “a dumping area of tall grass,” she said. Now, the association is planning to hold meetings at the park.

“It’s been a long haul,” Turner said. “We’ve been really happy with the support, but it definitely started as a local resident push, and we got some support once it got legs.”

Planned for construction in early 2027, it is hoped to be finished by that fall. The project has a $2.58 million budget, mostly funded by a $1.5 million county grant.

Public Works staff are planning to unveil detailed plans at a meeting on May 28, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Recreation Park Community Center (4900 E. 7th St.) Members of the public are encouraged to ask questions and share their thoughts. Interpretation services in Spanish, Khmer and Tagalog are available upon prior request.

Click here for more updates on the project.

As she runs for re-election, L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto faces turmoil and claims of unethical behavior from career prosecutors in her office who have accused her of favoring political donors in criminal cases and questioned her administrative decisions and demeanor.

The allegations have been laid out in emails and a memo obtained by LAist, as well as a sworn declaration to a court.

In emails to colleagues earlier this year, two supervising prosecutors questioned the city attorney’s directive to drop a price gouging case against a major campaign donor. One claimed it’s part of a pattern by Feldstein Soto.

“This latest instruction now to dismiss an active case fully supported by the evidence showing not just probable cause, but a high likelihood of conviction by a jury at trial is improper and unethical,” wrote Dennis Kong, who leads the unit handling price gouging prosecutions, in a Feb. 3 email to colleagues. “Especially in light of the fact that we have confirmed that the parties involved are campaign donors."

Kong did not respond to requests for comment. Office policy prohibits him and almost all other City Attorney staff from speaking to the media.

In interviews with LAist, Feldstein Soto denied ever allowing money or personal relationships to affect her decisions.

“That’s not how I roll,” she said. Instead, Feldstein Soto said her decisions were based on a policy she put in place to follow the Constitution.

In the memo, sent to higher-ups in the office in December, a different group of supervising prosecutors pushed back on Feldstein Soto’s decision to delete criminal case data that’s more than 10 years old.

Feldstein Soto told LAist deleting the older data was a prudent step to make sure sensitive information from older criminal cases — which is confidential under state law — doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office later said the older data will be kept on a physical backup, with prosecutors' access restricted. It’s unclear whether that’s been followed through on.

While Feldstein Soto has dealt with these criticisms from career staff, a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit from a different, former senior prosecutor — alleging misconduct by Feldstein Soto — has been working its way through the courts.

Among other things, that case — filed by the former chief of the prosecutions branch under Feldstein Soto — alleges the city attorney illegally ordered prosecutors to drop a case in order to help her friend and a major donor. The plaintiff, Michelle McGinnis, alleges she was fired in retaliation for opposing and disclosing unlawful actions by Feldstein Soto. The city attorney and the city’s lawyers in the suit have denied the claims, saying Feldstein Soto disciplined her for legitimate reasons.

A judge has allowed that lawsuit to proceed, finding the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto had legitimate reasons to discipline McGinnis.

From the evidence, the ruling states, “a reasonable trier of fact could conclude plaintiff’s protected activity was a contributing factor in defendant’s adverse employment actions against her.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and six of the 15 L.A. City Council members have endorsed Feldstein Soto in her bid for re-election in June. She lost the endorsement of the main LAPD officers’ union over the handling of a massive data breach that exposed confidential files about officers. The police union and county District Attorney Nathan Hochman are endorsing a challenger.

Feldstein Soto told LAist the pushback from the criminal branch of her office is in response to her efforts to reform the City Attorney’s Office.

“I came into this office under a cloud of corruption. Twenty percent of our City Council [members] were indicted or in jail. Six lawyers in this office were under investigation,” Feldstein Soto said. “I was elected to change the status quo. I’m still doing that. And people who benefited under the old status quo have a different agenda.”

Wildfire price gouging case

In the wake of last year’s devastating wildfires, the City Attorney’s Office has filed four criminal cases alleging price gouging, which makes it illegal to spike prices more than 10% during an emergency.

In February, Feldstein Soto directed prosecutors to drop two of those cases.

Scott Marcus, the city attorney’s criminal branch chief, informed prosecutors about that decision in a Feb. 3 email.

Feldstein Soto, he wrote, was concerned the defendants did not receive cease and desist letters before the charges, did not think there was enough evidence to charge people who manage the company and did not believe the cases were an appropriate use of the office’s “limited resources.”

Marcus wrote that Feldstein Soto agreed with his suggestion to dismiss the cases after they “verify that any victim of illegal price increases received restitution and was made whole.”

Kong, a supervising attorney in the criminal branch, responded via email that the order was “improper and unethical” because the case was strong and one of the defendants had donated to Feldstein Soto’s campaign.

“It is safe to say that a pattern has now emerged of the City Attorney's personal interest in protecting her donors,” Kong wrote. “We cannot have that.”

The case Kong was referring to involves the Paddock Riding Club in Atwater Village. In December, prosecutors at the City Attorney’s Office charged PCAM LLC, which does business as the riding club, and three members of the family that runs the business with “price gouging animal boarding services.”

Publicly available court records do not detail the allegations against the riding club, but the company was accused on social media of more than tripling its normal boarding prices to evacuees of the Eaton Fire. The Paddock Riding Club apologized after online backlash and said it was working to rectify the situation.

The City Attorney’s Office confirmed that one person paid the riding club about $1,900 at the higher rate and was later refunded.

The lead individual defendant’s first and last name, birthdate and address corresponds with Alex Chaves Sr., who stewards the property and lives there, according to the Paddock’s website. When reached for comment, his son — also named Alex Chaves — told LAist that the Paddock is “my dad’s place.” Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for the city attorney, said Feldstein Soto’s office does not know if the father or son is the defendant.

Chaves Sr. and defense attorneys in the case have not responded to requests for comment.

Campaign finance records show Chaves Sr., his wife, son Alex Chaves and daughter-in-law each gave maximum-allowed campaign contributions to Feldstein Soto on the same day in December 2024, totaling $7,200.

Around the time they filed the Paddock case in early December, prosecutors also filed price gouging charges against another horse boarding business — Gibson Ranch in Sunland — and its owner. Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to also drop that case when she ordered the Paddock case dropped.

The Gibson Ranch defendants do not show up as donating to Feldstein Soto in campaign contribution searches.

That case was dismissed this month. Their defense attorney, Greg Yacoubian, said the price gouging law did not apply in the Gibson Ranch case because it compared prices charged by a new owner with those from the previous owner at that location. (The price gouging law is specific to a particular person or business selling, or offering to sell, something for a price that’s over 10% higher than they charged just before a declared emergency.)

The arraignment hearing for the Paddock case has been postponed twice since Feldstein Soto’s early February directive to dismiss it, and is now scheduled for June 18.

“We have not moved to dismiss because the Office is confirming the evidence in the case in accordance with appropriate practice, policies, and procedures,” said a city attorney spokesperson.

Scott Marcus, chief of the city attorney’s criminal branch, at a Feb. 26 court hearing in the Paddock case, where he told the judge the arraignment was being postponed.

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Nick Gerda

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LAist

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Feldstein Soto called claims of favoritism “nonsense,” telling LAist she knew who the Paddock defendants were but not whether they donated to her campaign.

She said she wanted to dismiss the two price gouging cases because prosecutors failed to follow a policy she put in place in 2023 — to only prosecute company leaders for the actions of their business if they were actively involved in committing the act or failed to fix the problem after being put on notice they could face charges.

A spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s administration said the City Attorney’s Office has sent warning letters to almost all of the roughly 1,100 potential price gouging defendants from the wildfires as a way to achieve “compliance and restitution without having to file criminal or even civil charges.”

The goal of regulatory prosecutions, she said, “is to achieve compliance and to get restitution for the victims.”

In follow-up emails forwarded to colleagues who advise on ethics compliance, Kong and another supervising prosecutor in his unit expressed alarm at Feldstein Soto’s directive. Kong called the Paddock case "righteous" and described an “ethical conundrum.”

“I do not want to place our supervisors, our line deputies, or myself in a position where they will be compromised in any shape or form or worse, an accessory to unethical conduct,” Kong wrote. He also noted the law does not require warning letters before filing price gouging charges.

[Click here to read the emails.]

The McGinnis declaration

In a sworn court declaration last year, McGinnis — the former criminal branch chief ousted by Feldstein Soto — alleged a range of ethics violations by the city attorney.

Among them, McGinnis wrote that Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to dismiss a building safety prosecution where the defense attorney was a friend whose wife was a maximum donor to her campaign. That case — against Zenith Insurance and its then-CEO Kari Lynn Van Gundy — alleged 14 criminal violations of building safety laws, including around fire safety and exit doors. Court records show Feldstein Soto’s office dropped the charges against Van Gundy in January 2024, followed by dropping the case against the company in September 2024.

Campaign finance records corroborate the donation described in the allegations. Defense attorney Ben Reznik’s wife gave a maximum campaign contribution to the city attorney in 2022, per campaign filings. Feldstein Soto said she knows Reznik’s wife through social circles.

The city attorney “simply wanted her donor/friend’s case dismissed,” McGinnis wrote in her court declaration, which was filed as part of her whistleblower retaliation lawsuit.

The city attorney denied friendships or donations have ever had anything to do with her decisions.

“ I've prosecuted tons of cases,” Feldstein Soto said. “I've filed cross complaints against all kinds of people, including donors who have called me up spitting and yelling, OK?”

Reznik told LAist that Feldstein Soto’s recommendation was to dismiss only the charges against the then-CEO — Van Gundy — but not against the company itself. The CEO “had no clue” about the building matters that the case was about, he said.

“There was absolutely no basis to name the individual [CEO] of the company” as a defendant, Reznik said. The case, he said, was about “very minor infractions” regarding building codes like fire doors, some of which he said did not apply to the building in question.

After fixing the issues that were cited and getting clearance from the fire department, the charges against the company were dismissed, Reznik said.

In another case, McGinnis wrote, Feldstein Soto pressed hard — “without evidence” — to McGinnis and LAPD leaders for charges to be filed against an activist she thought had protested outside the home of another major donor. In that case, McGinnis wrote that LAPD commanders demanded a meeting with city attorney managers to object to Feldstein Soto’s pressure. The city attorney says she later declined to file charges.

Feldstein Soto’s office says that allegation has “no truth.” As for the alleged meeting with LAPD leadership, her spokesperson said: “We have no knowledge of how the meeting came about and what happened at the meeting.”

“In no uncertain terms, the City Attorney did not and would not pressure a client on any issue,” added the spokesperson. (In addition to overseeing the city’s prosecutors, the city attorney is the top lawyer representing and advising city officials about their official duties.)

Following the judge’s ruling that the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto disciplined McGinnis for legitimate reasons, the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in early 2027.

Data deletion memo

In December, three senior prosecutors in the City Attorney’s Office wrote a memo objecting to what they described as a plan to “purge all data” older than 10 years from the office’s text-only database of criminal case details, known as the Criminal Case Management System, or CCMS, as it migrates to a new system.

City attorney policy has been to destroy physical paper records of criminal cases, while the database of case information has been kept for decades, except for specific types of cases where deletion is required by law.

The memo was from three supervising prosecutors: Stacey Anthony, who directly supervises about three dozen criminal prosecutors, and two of her deputies.

They warned that deleting the data would harm victims and defendants because it’s often the only remaining source of crucial information.

“In many instances it would result in a miscarriage of justice,” states the Dec. 12 memo, a copy of which was obtained by LAist.

They wrote that the older data is used daily for a variety of crucial tasks — including strengthening rape and murder cases, evaluating the history of criminal defendants, generating letters for employment and immigration purposes that no charges were filed against an arrested person, and vetting criminal histories for police officers and others seeking licenses, credentials and firearm permits.

The supervising prosecutors wrote that it’s crucial that the older information be made readily accessible to prosecutors on a daily basis. The info is used for up to 50 requests per day to their part of the criminal branch alone, according to the memo.

[Click here to read the memo.]

Feldstein Soto and her office spokesperson initially confirmed the plan to delete the data altogether.

“I wanted to purge everything older than three years…but 10 years seems to be the consensus for how long we need to keep anything,” Feldstein Soto told LAist in December.

Feldstein Soto said deleting the data was a prudent step to make sure information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office said it does not have any evidence the database has been misused.

She said she’s looked in the database just once, looking up herself and seeing information about an old DUI case against her, which she pleaded to reckless driving.

“This came up in my last campaign. It was all over the place,” said Feldstein Soto.

During her 2022 campaign, information about her 1997 DUI case was posted on social media by an advocacy group. The post shows a public printout from the court summarizing the charges, without the kinds of detailed info that would be in the office database.

In January, a spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s office said the plan is to keep the older case data on an encrypted hard drive that will be more restrictive for prosecutors to access. She and her spokespeople have not answered questions in recent weeks about whether case data has already been deleted, nor whether they’ve developed the specific policies for prosecutors’ access.

Feldstein Soto told LAist she had to learn quickly about criminal law after being elected in late 2022 as the top elected boss above the city’s prosecutors.

“You realize, I had no criminal [law] background. So this was all learning on the job,” she said. Her experience before being elected was in bankruptcy and corporate law.

“It was baptism by fire,” she said, “to start in this office without a criminal background.”