The Brief

For years, advocates have pushed for more veteran housing on a large campus in West LA that was gifted to the government to house soldiers and veterans.

Here are five key facts to understand that campus and what the future holds:

What is the West LA VA campus?

It’s a sprawling property nearly half the size of New York’s Central Park, near UCLA and the Brentwood neighborhood of L.A. The campus is owned by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and hosts a major regional hospital and medical offices for veterans.

Throughout much of the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was known as an Old Soldiers’ Home — and at its peak was home to about 5,000 veterans in the early 1950s.

The government stopped allowing new residents there in the 1960s, and many of the buildings went into disrepair.

By 2015, there were no homes for veterans to live on the campus permanently, though several hundred lived in temporary beds at the time.

About 4,000 veterans were unhoused at the time across the country, the largest population of unhoused vets in the nation

What has the land been used for in recent decades?

In addition to the hospital, VA officials leased out much of the land for mainly private uses, including oil drilling, a laundry for Marriott hotels, a private school athletic facility, private parking lots and the baseball stadium for UCLA.

In 2018, a VA official pleaded guilty after prosecutors accused him of taking bribes to look the other way while a parking lot operator stole more than $11 million in revenues from its leases at the campus.

A 2016 law — the West Los Angeles Leasing Act — requires that any leases at the campus primarily benefit veterans. The current leases are under dispute over whether they benefit veterans, and a judge recently ruled that existing leases are illegal.

What were the promises to build housing?

The ACLU sued the VA more than a decade ago, alleging the leases were illegal and won a settlement in 2015 in which the VA agreed to build housing on the campus.

Then-VA Secretary Robert McDonald promised to find beds for all of L.A.’s unhoused vets by the end of that year.

But the VA has been many years behind schedule.

Veterans sued again in 2022, arguing the VA had a duty to build more housing on the land and house every veteran who needs housing to properly treat their medical conditions.

VA officials said they’re housing more veterans across L.A. than ever before, with the number of unhoused veterans dropping from about 3,900 to 3,000 in the year leading up to January.

What has the latest judge ruled?

Over the past few months, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has issued several key decisions, including:

• Ruling that VA officials engage in illegal housing discrimination by disqualifying veterans who were the most injured in their military service. Those veterans have lost out on shelter because their disability stipends from the VA often make their income level too high to receive housing help, under rules for the funding used to build the housing. 
• Ruling that the government has a legal duty to use the land to benefit veterans under the terms of the 1888 gift of the West L.A. property to the government.
• Ordering VA officials to add thousands more homes at the campus for unhoused veterans, citing what he describes as failures by the government to follow through on promises to end veteran homelessness.
• Ordering an even faster timeline to add homes for unhoused veterans at the campus, directing officials to add dozens of pre-built tiny homes before winter and hundreds by spring.
• Ordering UCLA’s baseball stadium cordoned off, in preparation for potentially placing tiny homes on the land.

What does the future hold?

Carter is now pushing VA officials to implement his faster-paced housing order, and is getting pushback.

The VA is appealing Carter’s housing orders, saying he has exceeded his legal authority.

And at a hearing on Thursday, VA officials argued that adding the first 100 tiny homes would cost $30 million and take those funds from crucial services.

Carter rejected that, saying the VA’s cost estimate was too high and questioning VA officials on “why you're not working with the Court to get these hundred people off the street.”

“I'm going to ask you to go back and make that call to whoever is in Washington, D.C., hiding behind the curtain of DOJ and the VA so we don't have a specific person here making those decisions, to really decide if this is what you want your legacy to be,” Carter told a lawyer for the VA. “Start helping these veterans.”

Later that day, Carter issued an order threatening to hold the VA in contempt if it doesn’t implement his housing order.

If people are found in contempt for disobeying a lawful federal court order, consequences can include fines or imprisonment.

Carter gave VA officials until Wednesday morning to tell him why he shouldn’t hold them in contempt.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has rejected a proposal that would have let tenants across the county fall behind by about three months' worth of rent and still have local protections from eviction.

Supporters said the rules would have helped immigrants stay housed after losing income because of federal immigration raids.

Only one of the county’s five supervisors supported the expanded eviction protections. With none of the other four willing to second the motion in Tuesday’s meeting, the proposal died before it ever came to a vote.

The proposal failed after an hour of impassioned public comment from both renters and landlords. Onlookers chanted “cowards” as the board cleared the room for closed session.

Would the rules have been challenged in court?

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who put forward the proposal, said earlier in the meeting that expanding eviction protections would have been an appropriate way to help the county’s nearly one million undocumented immigrants.

Anticipating potential lawsuits to strike down the proposed ordinance, Horvath said, “I understand there is legal risk. There is in everything we do. Just like the risk undocumented Angelenos take by going outside their homes every day.”

Landlords spoke forcefully against the proposed rules. They said limiting evictions would saddle property owners with the cost of supporting targeted immigrant households.

“This proposed ordinance is legalized theft and will cause financial devastation to small housing providers,” said Julie Markarian with the Apartment Owners Association of California.

Horvath’s proposal would have built on an existing protection for renters in unincorporated parts of L.A. County, such as East L.A., Altadena and City Terrace. Under the current rules, renters can fall behind by up to one month’s worth of “fair market rent” (an amount determined by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department) and still be legally protected from eviction.

Protections won’t go countywide

Last week, county leaders voted to explore increasing that threshold to two months. But Horvath wanted to go further by increasing the limit to three months and making it apply countywide, not just in unincorporated areas.

Tenant advocates said family breadwinners have been detained during federal immigration raids, and other immigrants are afraid to go to their workplaces, causing families to scramble to keep up with the region’s high rents.

“Immigrant tenants are experiencing a profound financial crisis,” said Rose Lenehan, an organizer with the L.A. Tenants Union. “This protection is the bare minimum that we need to keep people housed and keep people from having to choose whether to stay in this county with their families and with their communities or self deport or face homelessness.”

A report published this week by the L.A. Economic Development Corporation found that 82% of surveyed small business owners said they’d been negatively affected by federal immigration actions. About a quarter of those surveyed said they had temporarily closed their businesses because of community concerns.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday placed on the June ballot a proposed temporary half-cent sales tax increase to fund the county’s struggling health care system, which has been hit hard by federal funding cuts.

If passed by voters, the increase would bring the county’s tax rate to 10.25%. It is projected to raise one billion dollars annually over five years.

The tax would expire in five years.

The background

County health officials said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will cut $2.4 billion from county health programs over three years, threatening closure of some of the county’s 24 clinics and an array of public health programs.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who co-authored the proposal, said the county faced a “federally imposed crisis” that in the absence of state action, could only be addressed by raising taxes on county residents.

“This motion gives the voters a choice, given the stark realities that our county is facing,” Mitchell said.

The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger the lone dissenter. Barger is the board’s sole Republican. She worried shoppers would go to Orange County, where the sales tax is 7.75%. She also said the state should take the lead on addressing federal funding cuts to county health care systems.

Public reaction

More than 700 people showed up Tuesday to speak out on the proposal. Health care providers pleaded with the board to place the measure on the ballot, saying federal funding cuts to Medi-Cal had hit them hard.

“This is a crisis,” said Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Association of L.A. County. “Medi-Cal accounts for over half of clinic funding. So these changes will lead to clinic closures, longer wait times, overcrowded E.R.’s and higher costs for the county.” 

Others opposed any plan that would increase the sales tax.

“Our city is opposed to the adding of this regressive tax to overtaxed residents and making it even more difficult for cities, especially small cities, to pay for the increasing cost of basic resident services,” said Rolling Hills Mayor Bea Dieringer. “The county needs to tighten its belt further.”

Details on the proposed plan

Under the plan, up to 47% of revenue generated will be used by the Department of Health Services to fund nonprofit health care providers to furnish no-cost or reduced-cost care to low-income residents who do not have health insurance. 

Twenty-two percent would provide financial support to the county’s Department of Health Services to safeguard its public hospital and clinic services. Ten percent would be allocated to the Department of Public Health to support core public health functions and the awarding of grants to support health equity.

The rest would be sprinkled across the health care system, including to support nonprofit safety net hospitals and for school-based health needs and programs.

A last-minute amendment by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath set aside 5% of funding for Planned Parenthood.

The spending would be monitored by a nine-member committee but ultimately would be up to the discretion of the Board of Supervisors.