5 things to know about veterans’ fight for more housing at West LA campus

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.