West Los Angeles VA could add 900 veteran housing units

West Los Angeles VA could add 900 veteran housing units

As many as 900 vulnerable veterans could have permanent housing on the West Los Angeles VA campus under a draft plan to return the sprawling property to its original mission.

And the number of permanent housing units for homeless, disabled, female and single-parent veterans could eventually grow to 2,500, according to the preliminary draft master plan VA released last week. The public has until early December to submit comments. VA Secretary Robert McDonald will consider those comments in deciding whether to adopt or modify the plan early next year.

Initial reaction among veterans groups is cautious optimism. “We haven’t had a chance to look at it in detail, but so far we’re happy with it,” said Larry Van Kuran, commander of The American Legion Department of California and co-chairman of a veterans coalition that is monitoring the project. “This is a conceptual plan. It doesn’t say we’re going to have this number of buildings and this number of beds. That’s where the veterans service organizations are going to have to be more involved.”

Homeless advocates see the preliminary plan as a starting point.

“This is an iconic property and should become an iconic showcase for how veterans are to be treated,” said Gary Blasi of the Public Counsel Law Center who also is one of the attorneys who sued VA over decades of misuse of the West LA campus. “We expect that the draft plan will change significantly before it is approved by Secretary McDonald as the result of more input from the community and, especially from veterans, over the next 45 days.”

The stakes are high. The largest concentration of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, female veterans and chronically homeless veterans in the United States are in Los Angeles County, according the draft plan. Addressing their needs is integral to VA’s pledge to end veteran homelessness nationally.

VA has the physical space to make it happen. The West Los Angeles campus is located on 387 acres given to the federal government in the late 1800s with the express purpose of housing disabled veterans. But a robust community for disabled veterans was quietly shuttered during the Vietnam War and mentally disabled veterans were pushed to the streets. VA then began leasing portions of the campus to private businesses for rental car storage, hotel laundry, a dog park and other enterprises that provide no benefit to veterans. Millions of dollars in lease payments have never been accounted for.

The ACLU and veterans sued VA in June 2011. That led to the settlement earlier this year that forces VA to return to using the campus solely for housing and caring for veterans. The draft plan is the first step.

A group of urban planning firms spent four months gathering public input on behalf of VA. Highlights included calls for better access to veteran’s health care, a halt to private leasing of the West Los Angeles VA property and greater transparency about how VA spends revenue from private leases.

The draft plan proposes developing four distinct zones on the campus. One zone would include the current VA medical center. One would focus on outpatient care. One would contain veterans housing and one would focus on recreation. The recreation zone, on the northern end of the kidney-shaped property, encompasses a private school’s athletic center and UCLA’s baseball stadium. Both UCLA and Brentwood School are negotiating to keep their facilities on the VA campus. UCLA may agree to provide more medical services to veterans as part of a future deal, Van Kuran said.Legislation proposed by U.S. Rep. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would allow VA to sign a 10-year lease with UCLA once the lease has been vetted.

The draft plan envisions permanent supportive housing that affords veterans easy access to health care. It also calls for three types of temporary housing, including quarters for veterans being treated at the domiciliary. Figuring out the right number of housing units will be key and no one is taking VA’s initial estimates at face value.

“We will continue to work with the nation’s best experts and the VA to see that the final master plan will provide for the housing that homeless veterans need now and will need in the future,” Blasi said.

Homeless veterans may have the choice of living in subsidized housing off campus. In the past, however, it has been difficult for veterans to find rental housing within reasonable proximity to VA health-care facilities.

The Legion and other groups will continue to be actively engaged in making sure VA produces a final plan beneficial to veterans. They formed a coalition last spring that includes Legion, DAV, VFW, AmVets, Vietnam Veterans of America, American GI Forum, Military Order of the Purple Heart and Jewish War Veterans to work on the West Los Angeles VA plan. They have met with McDonald four times and meet with his special assistant for the West Los Angeles project every other week or as needed, Van Kuran said.

The final plan should go far beyond housing and health care. “One of the concepts we’re talking about is job and employment training,” Van Kuran said. “It’s a more holistic package than we’ve ever seen before.”

Meanwhile, the veterans’ coalition will meet with retired Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the near future to enlist his support for refocusing the West Los Angeles VA campus on veteran’s needs.

No matter what happens, there’s years of work ahead. “At this point it’s all on paper,” Van Kuran said. “Getting to actually breaking ground will probably take several years.”

To download and read the preliminary draft master plan, visit www.losangeles.va.gov/MasterPlan/. Copies of the plan also are available at several Los Angeles area libraries.

To submit written comments by Dec. 7:

Online: Online comments may be submitted at www.Regulations.gov

By mail: Send comments to:

Director, Regulations Management (02REG)

Department of Veterans Affairs

810 Vermont Ave. NW

Room 1068

Washington, D.C. 20420

By Fax: (202) 273-9026

Please note: Be certain to indicate that your comments are submitted in response to “Notice: Preliminary Draft Final Master Plan.”