MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
On this Memorial Day, we go to Los Angeles, which has the highest number of homeless veterans in the country. It's also got a nearly 400-acre Veterans Affairs campus in the middle of West LA. Advocates have fought in the courts and in the streets for decades to use that space to house veterans. But earlier this month, President Trump signed an executive order that could change everything, as NPR's Quil Lawrence reports.
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QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: On an early weekday morning, just steps away from some of California's fanciest boutiques and bistros, Irving Webb is desperately trying to break camp.
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LAWRENCE: Sanitation workers with shovels clear the sidewalk he's been living on for the last few nights. Webb salvages what he can pile into a shopping cart. His bright red hair and beard cloud around his head. He's disoriented.
IRVING WEBB: I just woke up. What time is - is it around, like, before noon, or is it afternoon?
LAWRENCE: Right now?
WEBB: Yeah.
LAWRENCE: It's about 9 o'clock, 9:15...
WEBB: Oh, OK.
LAWRENCE: ...In the morning, yeah.
WEBB: Not at all, then (ph).
LAWRENCE: The sanitation guys aren't mean about it. They're asking him what he wants to keep, and they give him some food from McDonald's.
Oh. The man has McDonald's.
WEBB: Oh, yeah. The man has McDonald's. Thank you, buddy,
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I told you I got you.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And everything is done.
WEBB: Yep. I just got to pack it up. Cool. OK. Where are you going to be at?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: On this side - this side right here.
WEBB: OK.
LAWRENCE: They know he's a war veteran. This sidewalk is right along the fence of the huge West LA Veterans Affairs campus. It's 388 acres - that's about 300 football fields - in one of the country's priciest ZIP codes. This estate was donated in 1888 to veterans as a soldiers home. In recent decades, it was not used that way, with parts of it carved off and leased to a fancy private school and UCLA's baseball stadium. A lawsuit back in 2011 forced the VA to start building housing on the campus, but it's been slow. There is a camp of temporary shelters just inside the gates. That hasn't worked for Irving Webb, though.
WEBB: I've been here for five years. I used to do that all the time. It doesn't work for me. This is what works for me, and they're freaking killing me here. This is, like, the fifth time in the last month.
LAWRENCE: There are overflow beds at the shelter on campus, but sometimes they run out.
ROB REYNOLDS: You'll have veterans that show up in the evening, and, you know, if there's not enough room, there's nowhere for them to go. They sleep outside or they'll end up out on the street.
LAWRENCE: Iraq vet Rob Reynolds works with homeless vets in and outside the gates. He says some of these folks can be hard to help. They don't follow the rules or show up in time to get available beds. He says that's often for the same reason they ended up on the streets to begin with. They're struggling.
REYNOLDS: And a lot of times, mental health diagnoses don't happen until your mid-20s. So they get out of the service. They have PTSD. The next thing, you know, they get hit with schizophrenia or bipolar and it's just compounded. And, you know, housing on this property is very important for some people that have severe disabilities because they can be right next to the hospital. They can be right next to where they get their mental health care.
LAWRENCE: Last year, a judge ordered the VA to immediately build hundreds of new temporary housing units. But then the government appealed that ruling, making the vets wait, says Reynolds.
REYNOLDS: That's the real shame in all of this, is that had we just gone forward and got these additional temporary housing units on the property, this wouldn't be an issue today.
LAWRENCE: That appeal, which is mostly about who will oversee construction was argued last month before a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit.
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UNIDENTIFIED COURT OFFICIAL: All rise. This court shall resume session.
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CONSUELO CALLAHAN: Please be seated.
LAWRENCE: The government attorney, Daniel Winik, pointed out that the VA has come a long way.
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DANIEL WINIK: And there's real progress happening on the campus today. Among other things, the number of permanent supportive housing units has nearly doubled since the time of trial. From 2023 to 2024, the number of homeless veterans in Los Angeles declined by about a quarter.
LAWRENCE: He argued VA should get to continue that progress. The plaintiffs' attorney, Mark Rosenbaum, said VA has been promising to fix this soon for 15 years.
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MARK ROSENBAUM: There is a record here. There is a record that goes back to 2011 in terms of the government not doing close - if you take a look at the number of units, it's, like, 26 units a year. They put up more units in a week in Iraq than they did here.
CALLAHAN: I'm tipping my hand a little bit. I mean, obviously, I could be persuaded.
LAWRENCE: Presiding Judge Consuelo Callahan seemed to lean toward the plaintiffs.
CALLAHAN: When I look at, historically, from when it came in the first place, that it's really hard to say that the VA's done a good job.
LAWRENCE: While the Court of Appeals is deliberating, though, the White House may have made the whole case moot. On May 9, President Trump released an executive order that the West LA VA campus will be transformed to house and care for 6,000 homeless veterans by 2028. VA Secretary Doug Collins spoke about it on "Fox & Friends."
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DOUG COLLINS: He's focused on West LA, and he's going to make it a center in which we are - of excellence in which we're actually looking to help homeless veterans, give them a place to live, get them the tools that they need to get back into society.
LAWRENCE: Six thousand homeless vets is about twice the current number in all of LA. So it's not clear if the administration intends to bring in more homeless vets from other states. In the past, VA officials opposed putting so many troubled veterans, even just from LA, in one place. They said it could be like redlining and make the campus into a ghetto where no one would want to live. But advocates in LA are taking Trump's executive order as a win, says Rob Reynolds.
REYNOLDS: I'm very thankful that President Trump took this position that - with this executive order, that this is a soldiers home and it was donated for that reason and that we need to get our veterans off the street.
LAWRENCE: But Democrat Brad Sherman, who represents West LA in Congress, says he's waiting for the fine print. For example, Trump's order says the funding will come from money for, quote, "illegal aliens."
BRAD SHERMAN: It seems like just kind of a campaign press release saying President Trump loves veterans and hates undocumented immigrants.
LAWRENCE: Sherman reckons it would take more than $3 billion to construct 6,000 units. A VA spokesman said the details will be forthcoming but didn't answer any specific questions. For now, veterans advocates in LA are hoping this means their housing gets built. They don't care who gets the credit as long as it finally gets done.
Quil Lawrence NPR News, Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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