Via Stars and Stripes:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will open a transitional housing facility for veterans on Thursday and launch a planning process later in June for the redevelopment of its 387-acre West Los Angeles VA Medical Center campus, just six months after settling a 2011 lawsuit that accused the VA of misusing the land and discriminating against homeless vets.
VA Secretary Bob McDonald will be there to mark the first step in the transformation: a 60-bed housing and work therapy facility for homeless veterans. In a symbolic gesture, he will open the gates to the property’s grand lawn, closed for decades.
This is something that should have been done decades ago. I live less than a block from this sprawling campus and see firsthand every day the homeless vets wandering around. Some of the more “lucky” ones are staying in hotels that would have to undergo improvements to become crack houses. The VA has been sitting on hundreds of some of the most prime real estate in all of Los Angeles and doing almost nothing with most of it.
It is unconscionable that situations have to reach crisis points at these various facilities before we begin giving even the bare minimum treatment to those who fought for this country.
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