Los Angeles
CNN
—
A group of veterans has filed a lawsuit to force homes to be built for them on land now used for elite sports facilities in Los Angeles.
Fourteen unhoused veterans and the National Veterans Foundation filed a complaint in Central California’s federal district court against the Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday night, demanding their needs be put first.
“Get the f**k off our land! Or build us housing,” Joshua Petitt, an unhoused Iraq War veteran, told CNN in an alley a hundred yards or so from the gates of the land, which is known as the West Los Angeles Campus.
There are more homeless veterans in Los Angeles than anyplace else in this country – around 3,500 of them on the streets and in shelters, according to the city’s Homeless Services Authority. There are also 388 acres in the leafy, lovely neighborhood of Brentwood on the city’s West Side that were given to the nation specifically to house veterans. But very few veterans actually live here. The land is used for a large VA health center and, among other things, the UCLA Bruins’ baseball diamond, and the sports fields and swimming pool of the elite Brentwood School. They are neighbors, and the Department of Veterans Affairs leases them chunks of this valuable parcel.
The lawsuit demands that, “Permanent Supportive Housing should be made available within 6 months, both on the WLA Campus and in apartments near the WLA Campus for at least 3,500 eligible homeless veterans.” Obviously to help those veterans with housing, and to give them access to services they need that are offered on the campus. It also seeks an injunction, forcing the VA not to use the land “for purposes that are not primarily related to providing housing and healthcare for veterans with disabilities.” So no more private school playing fields.
Petitt, who lived for a year in a tent outside the fence that surrounds this land, is now one of the 14 unhoused veterans among the plaintiffs. “They don’t want us here, bro. I mean, I get it. But I don’t care,” he said. “People always talk about Beverly Hills. But Beverly Hills ain’t nothing compared to Brentwood. That’s why they don’t want us here, because we might be hard to deal with, we have some problems. But they can send us to war to get those problems? But then not have to deal?”
A spokesperson for UCLA told CNN, “UCLA is in full compliance with the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016, as indicated in the Department of Veteran Affairs Office of the Inspector General’s audit of September 2021.”
Terrence Hayes, the VA’s press secretary, told CNN after the suit was filed, “While we cannot comment on ongoing litigation, we at the VA promise that we will not rest until every Veteran has a good, safe, stable home in this country they fought to defend.”
Hayes pointed out that this year across Los Angeles the VA has, “made available 138 units of housing with nearly 700 more units expected in 2023.” And as for building those new units on the VA campus, he says there will be more than 700 units completed by the end of 2025.
CNN asked the Brentwood School for comment on the lawsuit. They have not yet replied.
Earlier this year, CNN published an investigation into what has happened and is happening here on the land and the promises made previously to veterans.
In 2016, after intense pressure from veterans and their advocates, and after another lawsuit, the VA agreed to house veterans on this land. They published a Master Plan. When we visited in March, more than 700 new housing units should have been completed. But…
Read More: Veterans sue VA demanding land be used for homes and not rented out to a college