LOS ANGELES (CN) — A group of homeless veterans who suffer from mental or physical disabilities can proceed with their lawsuit to force the federal government to provide them with supportive housing on the 388-acre, flagship Veteran Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.
U.S. District Judge David Carter at a hearing Thursday in downtown LA denied motions to dismiss the lawsuit, which was brought by the VA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
Carter himself is a Vietnam veteran, and has used the bench before to decry the homelessness crisis that has been plaguing the LA area. At the hearing he encouraged Congress to get involved in resolving the problem of homeless vets, with many of them having returned severely disabled from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We are the homeless veterans capital of the world right now," Carter said, referring to the 3,500 vets living on the streets of LA. "We can't let his happen."
The judge said he didn't want the lawsuit, first filed in November of last year, to languish any longer. Barring a settlement, he wants the case to go to trial this coming summer, he told the parties.
The walled complex near the wealthy Brentwood neighborhood on LA's westside takes up 388 acres of land donated to the VA in 1887 to be a "soldier's home," a place for wounded veterans to live. But the lush, sprawling campus, which includes a large hospital for veterans, offers little in the way of permanent housing structures for veterans in need.
"There are today more than 100 buildings on the WLA campus, many vacant, closed or underutilized, as well as acres of available land," the veterans say in their complaint. "In contrast to what once existed and was intended, virtually no permanent housing is available to veterans with disabilities on the WLA campus."
The campus does offer housing for a number of VA administrators. The VA has also leased pieces of its land to a variety of organizations, including to the nearby University of California, Los Angeles for a baseball field, an expensive private school and an oil drilling operation.
In the federal lawsuit the veterans ask for an end to those leases, which don't serve veterans, and for the VA to build 1,200 units of housing on the campus within five years. They also also want the VA ordered to provide 3,500 units of interim housing (which could simply be vouchers to rent already constructed apartments) near the campus within six months.
At Thursday's hearing, attorneys for the the U.S. Justice Department and LA's Housing Authority in vain tried to persuade the judge to change his tentative decision denying their motions to dismiss. Instead, the judge finalized his ruling, which wasn't yet available on the court's docket, saying it was the right decision.
Homeless vets previously tried to secure more housing on the West LA campus where the surrounding homeowners typically have opposed efforts to create more housing for low-income people.
In 2011, ten unhoused veterans with severe disabilities sued the VA for its failure to provide housing on the West LA grounds.
Multiple leases on the campus that failed to benefit veterans were invalidated by the lawsuit, according to the current complaint, and in January 2015, VA agreed as part of a settlement to draft and implement a Master Plan to provide housing and supportive services for veterans on the campus.
The VA specifically agreed to build 1,200 permanent supportive housing units for veterans on the grounds, 770 of which were to be completed by 2022. However, according to the new lawsuit, none were built.
The VA "has failed even to make essential infrastructure upgrades for utilities like water, sewer, and stormwater systems, let
alone provide housing for the 1,200 unhoused veterans with disabilities to which it committed," the plaintiffs said.
Follow @edpettersson
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
