A federal court hearing is set Wednesday to explore efforts to construct more than 100 temporary housing units for homeless military veterans on Veterans Affairs property in West Los Angeles as winter weather nears.
The downtown LA hearing was scheduled after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals halted work on the placement of modular housing on designated paved parking lots near the UCLA baseball stadium on the VA grounds. The construction was ordered last month by U.S. District Judge David Carter as an emergency remedy for homeless veterans in light of approaching rainy weather.
Notice of the stay was filed in the downtown Los Angeles courthouse on Tuesday after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs took the case to the appellate panel in October.
Work had already begun to prepare the designated areas for the modular units.
Carter’s Oct. 7 emergency order held that “with fall and winter approaching and with thousands of homeless veterans still living on the streets, an emergency exists.”
The developments stem from the monthlong trial in August of a lawsuit filed against the VA by a group of unhoused veterans with disabilities, challenging land lease agreements and seeking housing on the campus for veterans in need, many of whom are homeless or must travel for hours to see their doctors. The judge, an 80-year-old Vietnam War veteran, found for the veterans.
During the non-jury trial, the VA argued that it was out of space on its 388-acre campus, and that the lack of available acreage precludes any increase to the 1,200 housing units the agency promised to open by 2030. VA attorneys alleged that any relief ordered by the court would burden the department financially and deprive it of the flexibility needed to solve veteran homelessness.
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Ultimately, the court found that veterans are entitled to more than 2,500 units of housing at the campus. After finding that land-use agreements with UCLA’s baseball team, the affluent Brentwood School, an oil company and other private interests on the West Los Angeles campus were illegal, Carter terminated the leases.
Although he shredded the leases, the judge allowed UCLA to resume using its baseball stadium for a year after the university agreed to pay $600,000 to the VA.
When the stay was issued, the court was in the midst of devising “exit strategies” for former tenants in order to ensure the land — including 10 acres leased to UCLA and 22 acres contracted to the Brentwood School — is put to a use that principally benefits veterans.
The judge directed the VA to build up to 750 units of temporary housing within 18 months and to form a plan to add another 1,800 units of permanent housing to the roughly 1,200 units already planned under the settlement terms of an earlier lawsuit.
Carter held that for years the VA — budgeted at $407 billion annually — has “quietly sold off” land badly needed for homeless military veterans.