On a cool weekday morning last month, just steps away from some of California's fanciest boutiques and bistros, Irving Webb was desperately trying to break camp as sanitation workers with shovels cleared the sidewalk he's been living on for the last few nights. The Iraq war veteran sweated through his white T-shirt, heaving his belongings into a shopping cart.
"I've been here for five years," he says, "and they're freaking killing me. This is like the fifth time in the last month."
"Here" is outside the gate of the VA's sprawling West LA campus. Los Angeles has the highest number of homeless veterans in the country — which is surprising, since it's also got a massive, 388-acre Veterans Affairs campus that was donated in 1888 as a soldiers' home.
In recent decades though, it's been used for some questionable leases, including athletic fields for the private Brentwood School and UCLA's baseball stadium. Lawsuits have forced the VA to start building housing, but it's been slow. Political pressure resulted in a sort of refugee camp temporary shelter on a parking lot inside the gates. If those tiny homes are full, overflow beds get assigned as available.
"I used to do that all the time. It doesn't work for me. This is what works for me," says Webb, even as his camp gets swept off the sidewalk and into a garbage truck.
"You'll have veterans that show up in the evening, and there's not enough room. There's nowhere for them to go," said Rob Reynolds, an Iraq veteran and advocate for LA's homeless vets.
It's often the neediest veterans that are hardest to help, Reynolds said. He says if the VA had moved faster building housing on the property there would be more options for vets of different eras, or with problems like mental illness or substance abuse.
"Housing on this property is very important for some people that have severe disabilities because they can be right next to the hospital. They can be right next to where they get their mental health care," he said.
Warrior Independence
Now an executive order from the White House on May 9 has given Reynolds new hope that the housing could finally be coming.
"The VA campus in West Los Angeles will become the National Center for Warrior Independence with facilities and resources to help our veterans earn back their self-sufficiency," the order reads. It directs the VA secretary to create a plan within 60 days to house 6,000 veterans on the campus by 2028.
But the order came without consultation with Los Angeles VA officials, according to three current and former government employees who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal communications. VA spokesman Pete Kasperowicz said details would be forthcoming but did not answer specific questions.
One detail that is included in the order plan has raised questions. The number, 6,000 veterans, is about twice the current number of homeless vets in LA. It's not clear if that means the Trump administration might use the LA campus to house veterans from across the country. In the past VA officials opposed putting so many troubled veterans – even just from LA – in one place. They said it could be like redlining, and make the campus into a sort of ghetto, where no one would want to live.
Democrat Brad Sherman, who represents West LA in Congress, says the lack of specifics makes him doubt the order is serious. For example, the order says the construction will be paid for with "funds that may have been spent on housing or other services for illegal aliens."
"It seems like just kind of a campaign press release saying President Trump loves veterans and hates undocumented immigrants," said Sherman.
Many of the delays to construction on the VA campus were legal issues with the VA getting into the housing business. Advocates in LA have raised funds through public-private partnerships that have taken years to put together. Sherman said he'll be pleased if the Trump administration does fund more construction.
"I hope very much that he comes forward with a plan to provide what could be as much as $3.3 billion to build 6,000 units of housing," he said.
Reynolds, the Iraq vet and advocate, embraced the news.
"The executive order is the morally correct thing to do. There's no reason that we should have thousands of veterans sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles when we have nearly 400 acres of land that was donated to house them, so I'm very thankful that President Trump took this position," said Reynolds.
While they await the fine print, advocates in LA are dreaming that their larger plans for the campus could be fully funded – which include not just getting vets off the streets, but services and long-term housing in a real neighborhood with parks and stores and a stop on the metro.
"We don't care who takes credit as long as it's done properly," said Steve Peck, with the West LA Veterans Collective.
In the background, another effort to build housing on the campus is still playing out. Last year a judge ordered the VA to immediately build hundreds of new temporary housing units. But then the government appealed, and a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit heard arguments in April. So far the Trump administration has not dropped the government's appeal, which demands less than half the housing units just mandated by the executive order.
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