The Department of Veterans Affairs released a plan to use a 387-acre tract of land in west Los Angeles to help end veteran homelessness in the city.
There's a real focus on getting homeless veterans into housing quickly, said Gary Blasi, one of the attorneys with Public Counsel, which represented veterans in a lawsuit against the VA over the use of its West Los Angeles campus.
"Nobody falls through the cracks," Blasi said.
The plan specifies that within the next 100 days, the VA will hire experienced people to help get homeless veterans into permanent housing, increase funding to support for veteran families, and make temporary housing available for those who cannot immediately move into permanent housing. By April, 650 veterans will get homes through a partnership with the Home for Good organization, according to the plan.
Beyond 100 days, the VA will coordinate with the Los Angeles mayor's office to improve access to affordable housing, work with the Department of Labor and other organizations to increase job opportunities and access to federal, state and local services for homeless veterans, and open a 62-bed work therapy facility on the West LA campus.
In 2011, attorneys working on behalf of homeless veterans filed a class-action suit against the VA, saying its benefits programs discriminated against veterans who are homeless as a result of severe mental disabilities.
The lawsuit also accused the VA of misusing its West LA campus. The land was deeded to the federal government in 1888 to provide a home for disabled veterans, but it currently houses several rental tenants, including a hotel laundry facility and the UCLA baseball stadium.
Los Angeles has the largest concentration of homeless veterans in the country, and although the West campus had previously housed thousands of veterans, much of the land has been rented for other uses for the past several decades, Blasi said.
"This was a huge resource, and there wasn't a single unit of permanent supportive housing on it," he said.
In late January, the VA agreed to a settlement that required officials to create a plan for using the land to house homeless veterans.
During a January swing through the Los Angeles area, VA Secretary Robert A. McDonald said he was sending $50 million and 400 workers to the region, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
The VA is expected to immediately begin working to return the property to its intended use, but won't release its master plan for the campus until October.
Ending veteran homelessness is a real challenge, Blasi said, but it is "nothing compared to what the veterans have done."
"We have to step up," he said.
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