Judge blasts VA for renting out land meant to house vets
Michael Gennaro
LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal judge granted partial summary judgment to a group of homeless veterans who sued the Department of Veteran Affairs over its failure to provide better and more affordable housing for unhoused vets.
U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote in his 30-page ruling Sunday that the VA’s practice of leasing land to third-party developers who impose restrictive income limitations and include disability benefits as income in determining eligibility for housing discriminates against veterans.
A group of homeless veterans who suffer from mental or physical disabilities filed the lawsuit in November 2022 to force the federal government to provide them with supportive housing on the 388-acre flagship Veteran Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.
The walled complex near the wealthy Brentwood neighborhood on LA's westside takes up 388 acres of land donated to the VA in 1887 to be a "soldier's home," a place for wounded veterans to live. But the lush, sprawling campus, which includes a large hospital for veterans, offers little in the way of permanent housing structures for veterans in need.
In 2011, 10 unhoused veterans with severe disabilities sued the VA over its failure to provide housing on the West LA VA Grounds. To settle the lawsuit, the VA agreed to build 1,200 permanent supportive housing units for veterans on the grounds, 770 of which were to be completed by 2022. However, according to the 2022 lawsuit, none were built.
The campus does offer housing for a number of VA administrators. The VA has also leased pieces of its land to a variety of organizations, including to the nearby University of California, Los Angeles for a baseball field, to an expensive private school and to an oil drilling operation.
In their complaint, the veterans ask for an end to those leases, which don't serve veterans, and for the VA to build 1,200 units of housing on the campus within five years. They also want the VA ordered to provide 3,500 units of interim housing near the campus within six months.
Eligibility for the project based housing on the West LA VA Grounds is limited by income. A veteran may not make more than 30% of the area median income (“AMI”) to qualify for housing in many residential buildings on the West LA VA Grounds.
Developers include a veteran’s disability benefits as income. Therefore, the more disability benefits that a veteran receives (i.e., the more disabled they are), the higher their “income” is, and the less likely they are to receive housing on the grounds.
“Put simply: for our most disabled veterans — e.g., amputees and those with traumatic brain injuries and mental trauma — their disability disqualify them from residing in permanent supportive housing on the West LA VA Grounds,” Carter wrote.
Carter noted that Steve Braverman, the director of West LA’s VA medical system, testified the system is unjust.
“I think it’s fair to say that we are limiting some veterans, who by their service, would most benefit from being in these units,” Carter wrote in his ruling, quoting Braverman’s testimony.
The VA defended its present policies by arguing that they are income-based, not disability based.
“This argument does not overcome the fact that the most disabled veterans are categorically excluded from housing on the West LA VA Grounds. This policy facially discriminates against veterans based on their disabilities," Carter wrote. "Whether the VA’s policy nominally targets income or disability, the result is the same — the most disabled veterans remain ineligible for project-based housing on the West LA VA Grounds,” Carter wrote.
Carter found the offending part of the policy cannot be fixed without fundamentally changing the policy.
“The VA could eliminate the policy’s discriminatory impact by either contracting with developers who will not count disability as income, or by contracting with developers whose income cutoffs are a higher percentage of AMI. Either change would dramatically expand the number of veterans eligible for housing,” Carter wrote.
The VA argued that it is the third-party developers, not the VA, that impose the income limitation. However, the VA contracting with third party developers who impose discriminatory conditions does not shield the agency from liability, Carter ruled.
“The VA’s leasing decisions have the effect of disadvantaging those with extreme service-connected disabilities relative to less disabled veterans. That third-party developers, not the VA, are the ones directly imposing the discriminatory conditions is of no consequence. Defendants cannot outsource discrimination,” Carter wrote.
Carter also found the VA's acceptance of the land in 1888 created a charitable trust which created fiduciary duties to the veterans that the department must honor. Whether the VA breached those duties will be decided at trial, the judge ruled.
Carter previously denied the VA’s motion to dismiss in December.
Counsel for both sides did not reply to requests for comment before the deadline.