The Department of Veterans Affairs must establish hundreds of additional shelter beds within 18 months and build another 1,800 units of subsidized apartments by 2030 after a federal court ruled the agency has failed to comply with an agreement to develop a west Los Angeles campus with housing for disabled homeless veterans.
Judge David Carter issued a 125-page ruling late Friday that ended a month-long trial in a class-action lawsuit against the VA brought on behalf of disabled veterans living on the streets of Los Angeles County or at imminent risk of losing their housing.
The case, heard in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, was over the future of a 388-acre campus that a charity bequeathed to the VA in the late 1880s for the purpose of housing war veterans. The site is in an affluent section of Los Angeles.
The judge ordered the VA to terminate its lease agreements with commercial businesses operating at the site. They include a parking garage, a college athletic complex, a golf course and other business interests. The VA declined to say Monday how much revenue the agency collects from the leases.
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