It is a 387-acre campus of green fields and low-lying buildings in a prosperous neighborhood, donated to the federal government more than 100 years ago for use as a Pacific Coast home for wounded veterans. But over the last 20 years, as Los Angeles has become inundated with homeless veterans, advocates for the homeless say the campus has become a symbol of a system gone wrong: as veterans sleep on the streets, many of its buildings lie abandoned and one-third of the land has been leased for commercial use…
In the class-action suit, filed on behalf of four mentally distressed homeless veterans, lawyers contend that the department has violated the terms of the agreement in which the property was deeded to the government in 1888. They also contend that the department is required — under a federal statute barring discrimination against the mentally disabled — to provide housing to help mentally ill veterans…
By any measure, the lawsuit — the first of its kind, lawyers said — is a significant escalation in a battle that has simmered here for years, as homeless advocates contended that the Department of Veterans Affairs was bowing to residents of the property’s prosperous Brentwood neighborhood and commercial interests by refusing to rehabilitate abandoned buildings and use them to help veterans.
For the first 100 years of its existence, the campus was used entirely to provide housing and services to veterans; that began changing in the 1960s and ’70s, as some of the buildings were abandoned and the Department of Veterans Affairs leased about one-third of the property for use by, among others, a car rental agency, a laundry for the Marriott hotel chain, a golf course, a dog walk and a baseball stadium for the nearby University of California, Los Angeles. It now has a limited number of geriatric beds for veterans.
RTFA. The lawsuit is overdue. The debt owed America’s veterans is one that politicians often invoke – without doing a damned thing to pay up.
Here in NJ the closed Fort Monmouth is used for shelter services for vets and non-vets alike. Unused federal propery can be requested for use in sheltering the homeless. (I run a shelter so I know).
That is a lot of sweet land surrounded by flesh eating lawyers and bent developers. Really, the veterans may have left their case too late.
If I lived closer, I’d gladly lend my time to help get the buildings in the proper order.
Because you know the gubment would have to pay $1.2M just to get one building erected. Idiots.
I thought unused land had to be returned to the injuns?
I agree it is past time for this suit. I only regret that the elites responsible for the disgraceful choices made can’t be flogged and run out of the country.
I would have suggested thrown in prison rather than flogged and run out of the country but my understanding is the local prisons are already going to have to dump over 30,000 people?
why should “veterans” be treated any differently ((that is any better or any worse)) than any other citizen of this country?
If people need medical care—THEY SHOULD GET IT.
If people need food—THEY SHOULD GET IT.
If people need housing—THEY SHOULD GET IT.
If people need further education—THEY SHOULD GET IT.
If people need specialty job training—THEY SHOULD GET IT.
Stoopid Hoomans.
This site is about half a mile from my office. There is lots of open land, in one of the most expensive real estate locations in the USA. There’s plenty of room to build housing and plenty of additional room to lease out for 99 years to some developers to pay for it.
Its a bureaucratic shame!
#7
Where SHOUlD THEY GET IT from? Who will pay for it?
If people need medical care — BOBBO should pay for it.
If people need food — BOBBO should pay for it.
If people need housing — BOBBO should pay for it.
If people need further education — BOBBO should pay for it.
If people need specialty job training — BOBBO should pay for it.
If people need big screen TVs — BOBBO should pay for it.
If people need iPads and free WiFi — then they should move to Cupertino and make Steve Jobs pay for it.
#7 – What have you done to lay your life on the line for your country lately? Nothing? Got it.
STFU.
chuck–I draw the line at big screen TV’s outside the communal meeting room.
Who do you think “pays” for the cost associated with people NOT getting these services?==or do you think that is free as an alternative to society investing in itself?
Like I said—stoopid hoomans.
#11 – I’m glad you draw the line somewhere.
My point is that if you can decide to draw the line at big screen TVs, then I should be able to draw the line at a point I choose.
I’ll pay for my mother’s health care – and I’ll happily pay for veteran’s health care, but I don’t want to pay for yours.
#10–Cannon Fodder==what I’ve done for my country is irrelevant to the topic of this thread. The relevant issue is what is our country doing for those in need? Got It?
Get an Education—ha, ha==kinda feeds right in doesn’t it?
I wonder why Bobbo doesn’t just cut to the chase and say:
If people need money—THEY SHOULD GET IT.
JB–because people don’t “need” money. They only need what money can buy. But the subject of this thread is what is our country doing for those in need? ==== be they military or not?? Is the “need” not the same?? The moral requirement to provide not every bit as justified? What is society otherwise?
Ah, I understand.
Czar Bobbo will be the decider on what is needed vs. what is wanted.
Silly Communist
Filing a suit against the federal government because it is no longer using land that was donated to it over 100 years ago? I think they will soon learn that the federal government, being a sovereign entity, is not bound to the desires of long dead land donors.
The costs of waging war should be well known to the war-makers and planners, including how many disabled veterans (including mentally/emotionally crippled) will be generated by the planned event. Actuarial science has been studied since the days of the Roman Empire. But typically, future costs have been “kicked down the road” or, if provisions were made, the funds were later looted by those most dangerous of institutions, legislatures, from whom no funds are safe. The attitude is perfectly typified by the title of a Doonesbury collection: “But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There.”
#16–JB==I don’t know where you are getting the commie talk except from your fetid imagination. In the USA, we decide these things by democratic representations. Right now, 80% of the people definitely want a small list of things while Congress Creeps representing 1% of vested interests and a steady 30-60% of fools who can be fooled by idiot straw man arguments like your own vote Republican to thwart the majority will.
If czar’s there be, its in the minority of greedy Corporate Welfare Queens that pervert law and morality–ie, your hero’s not mine.
#17. How the government got the land is irrelevant. The mission of the Veterans Administration hospital is to serve the medical needs of veterans. Being homeless adversely affects the health of veterans. There’s land and even some buildings available to house the homeless veterans. It damned well should be used for that purpose or put to some use that will generate funds to house the homeless veterans elsewhere.
Leasing out for car storage or having farmer’s markets or athletic fields for UCLA are all nice, but they don’t address the mission and purpose of the VA. Other than the hospital building itself, I don’t think anything on that campus that serves the veterans has even been painted since 1950!
Maybe you have a point Bobbo but think this one over.
The courts are going to see to it that local criminals have a decent place to stay but you can’t trust the Fed gov and the leaders of this community to allow a place given to vets to take care of vets so they don’t have to sleep on the side walk.
This says to me that in this community and among some of the Fed Gov flunkeys criminals are seen as having more worth than a vet.
If the veterans were actually in combat, they should have full benefits, food, shelter, and treatment.
Bobbo, why don’t you start your own blog, and leave us all the fuck alone?
#23–Mark, 3rd Try—I’ve not read such a mournful cry of incompetence in quite a while. So, what got blown off/damaged when the humvee hit you?===balls, brains, backbone?
I’m thinking right now of the howl Count Floyd would do on 3D Horror Monster Theater: Hooooowwwllll! Well kids, wasn’t that scary??? Hooo, Hooo, Hoooowwwllllll……Kids, we got to howl because we don’t have the brains to offer an argument against that with which we disagree. (sic!)
Man enough to post, not enough to think.
Sad Hooman.
Mark III, I agree completely! I am sick of “Boobo-who thinks he knows all”!!! JCD why don’t you create a speacial place for Boobo so he can pontificate all his “knowledge” I’m really sick of him.
In this country when someone in power says support the troops he usually means support the policy.
They don’t mind seizing people’s private land to give to developers who pay the politicians. How about they just seize the government land and give it to the homeless?
#25 SWAT45
If we kicked everone who annoyed someone off the blog, there’d be no one left.
Are you against free expression? Why do you hate America?
Even TeaDud has a voice here, even if some days I wish he’d shut it.
#7, I agree with you 100%. They should get it. How they get it is up to them, though.
#7, Bobbo,
Well said.
Too bad these
lonerslosers can’t differentiate between what benefits society and what benefits the Kock brothers. They expect the government to be there when THEY need something, and not to exist when they don’t need them.#21, do ill
The prison overcrowding was caused by the California voters wanting a “three strikes and you’re out” criminal policy and then electing enough Republicans so they can’t fund the increased prison population.
The Courts are NOT the government and only uphold the Constitution. The overcrowding is unconstitutional. Sorry you hate America. So is America.