120 New Apartments For Unhoused Veterans Were ‘Move-In Ready.’ Months Later, Most Sit Empty

Years behind schedule on promises to house veterans experiencing homelessness, the opening of two newly restored apartment buildings this spring on the West L.A. Veterans Affairs campus was greeted with excitement by high-ranking leaders at the local, state, and federal level.

The May 2 opening was heralded as a major milestone toward promises to create 1,200 units at the campus for unhoused veterans.

In speeches covered widely in the press, high-level officials like VA Secretary Dennis McDonough and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass spoke of an urgent need to house people who struggle with physical and emotional wounds from fighting for their nation.

All 120 units were “move-in ready," VA officials said at the time.

But more than two months later, most of the housing is still unoccupied, LAist has learned.

As of late last week, only about one-third of the units had been moved into, leaving the other two-thirds vacant. That’s according to the latest available figures from the VA, which officials provided in response to our questions.

Dozens of vacancies

VA officials said in an email that they’ve identified veterans for approval for all 120 units, but only 42 people had moved in — leaving 78 units vacant.

“It’s definitely frustrating that those units have not been filled yet,” said Rob Reynolds, a formerly unhoused veteran who for years has advocated for veteran housing at the campus.

“[Unhoused veterans] watched the opening ceremony two months ago [with officials] congratulating themselves, and then here we are today, and the majority of them aren't even in there yet.”

In a statement for this article, Bass said she’s working to clear through red tape so people can get housed more quickly.

“There are barriers preventing some individuals from getting into housing that we are working to address,” the mayor said.

“But I believe, and I'm sure many do, that the time for bureaucracy and regulations is not in the middle of [a homelessness] emergency.”

The mayor, who has taken on homelessness as her top issue, oversees city agencies that have devoted dozens of housing vouchers to the new VA apartments.

Why are most of the apartments still empty?

When LAist asked in recent days, agencies involved in overseeing the apartments and approving veterans for the housing gave several reasons, some of which contradicted each other.

• Still waiting for disability inspection: For 19 of the apartments, the VA said people can’t move in yet because a city contractor hasn’t yet done a final inspection to make sure disability requirements are met. But city officials told LAist that’s not a barrier to moving people in. According to the city’s housing department, apartments have been approved for move-in since early April under a temporary certificate. After LAist’s questions this week, the city’s housing director said she contacted the building’s developer to assure them “that they have been free to lease up the [disability] units.”
• Waiting for veterans’ applications to be approved: The main reason VA officials gave for the vacant apartments was that veterans are still waiting for their applications to be approved. But the city and county say they’ve approved 111 people to move into the 120 units, as of Monday. That’s a lot more people than the 42 who have moved in.
• Key city approval didn’t come until a month after the opening event: Work to move people into one of the buildings couldn’t start until after June 5, because the city didn’t approve it for housing payments until then, said Aaron Criswell, chief housing development officer for the nonprofit group Step Up. The group was hired by the VA to help veterans navigate the process of getting apartments in the building, and to serve veterans once they’re living there. “Yes, ‘move-in ready,’ big picture,” Criswell said of the messaging around the May 2 opening. “But then you get down into the weeds and the details, and that’s where the devil is, right?”
• Waiting for veterans’ paperwork: It’s been difficult for social workers to find some veterans and get the information they need, Criswell said. “That’s just par for the course” with this type of housing, he said. “It takes a lot of work to get somebody housed.” Veterans shared different experiences with LAist. Unhoused Army veteran Josh Pettit said he’s provided all of the information that’s been asked of him as soon as it was requested. Pettit said he’s had to fill out the same paperwork, with dozens of pages, three different times in recent months and is still waiting to get into a new unit.

As part of efforts to contact Step Up this week, LAist called the organization’s veteran services department during business hours. No one picked up, and a recording said there was no functioning voicemail.

Filling out the same paperwork multiple times

Small changes officials made to the forms have made the paperwork more challenging, said Reynolds, the veterans advocate.

“It was very frustrating for a lot of these guys,” he said. “We literally were just copying information from one piece of paper to another piece of paper because a form number had changed.”

Pettit, who has three Purple Hearts from his infantry service in the army during the Iraq War, said he’s frustrated from months of trying to get placed in a new unit.

“I filled [the housing paperwork] out. Months go by. I have to fill it out again. Then months go by and I filled it out for a third time last week on Friday,” Pettit told LAist this week.

“It's dozens and dozens of papers that I have to go through again,” he said.

Federal rules require that income documents for this housing be current within the last 60 days, so if there are delays for other reasons, people have to fill out their income paperwork again, according to the city Housing Authority and Criswell.

Pettit used to live on the sidewalk outside the VA campus, in an encampment called Veterans Row that was later cleared by L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies. He now lives in a small shed-like shelter on campus with a bed and mattress, known as a tiny home.

Pettit said he was finally told that he should be able to sign a lease for one of the new apartments in about two weeks.

Campus was given to government for veteran housing

The massive 400-acre West L.A. VA campus was gifted to the federal government in the 1800s specifically to house former soldiers. At its peak, about 5,000 veterans lived on the campus during the Korean War.

But Congress later dismantled the VA’s soldiers home system, shifting the agency’s focus to healthcare and cemeteries.

VA officials in West LA eventually leased out much of the campus for non-veteran uses, including a laundry facility for Marriott hotels, athletic facilities for the private Brentwood School, a private parking lot, and a UCLA baseball stadium.

But with the West LA land specifically designated for veteran housing, and rising homelessness among veterans, the ACLU sued in 2011, saying the leases for non-veteran uses were illegal. A federal judge agreed, and the VA eventually settled the case, promising to build 1,200 units of housing on the campus.

But the promise wasn’t enforceable by the courts. And progress was slow, with the VA’s inspector general finding in 2021 that the agency was years behind schedule.

A new lawsuit — filed last year — seeks to get the VA to move faster at honoring its housing promises.

The 120 new units are fully refurbished, according to the VA, and include amenities such as outdoor community areas, indoor community spaces, central laundry facilities, onsite management offices, a leasing office, and case worker offices.

The inside of a bedroom at new housing for unhoused veterans at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus. About 80 of these apartments were still sitting empty in early July.

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Nick Gerda

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LAist

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Who’s actually in charge?

VA officials didn’t have an immediate answer about whether any one person is in charge of coordinating between the various agencies that have roles around the new housing.

Those agencies include the VA, at least two city housing agencies, a county department, the federal housing administration and the nonprofit Step Up.

City officials noted the VA housing situation can get perplexing with so many government offices responsible for different parts of it.

“There has been some confusion lately surrounding these buildings due to the different entities and agencies involved,” wrote Courtney Gladney, a spokesperson for the city’s Housing Authority.

Pettit said someone needs to be responsible for getting the agencies together to assess the problems that led to the empty apartments and figure out solutions.

“Who makes the decision?,” Pettit said. “It's crazy. There has to be somebody that makes the decision that we can talk to. Somewhere down the line this system is broken, and it needs to be fixed.”