[image credit: takepart.com]
Large homeless veteran population in Los Angeles, while VA rents out facilities as storage
For years, the streets of West Los Angeles and Santa Monica have been a haven for year-round outdoor homeless living, even though the Veterans Affairs Department owned a big parcel of West Los Angeles—tucked between the UCLA campus and the upscale Brentwood neighborhood—and used parts of it for commercial income instead of finding ways to house returned servicemen and women.
Solution: Convert available space into homeless housing
A new settlement would transform the 374-acre Veterans Affairs property, parts of which have been leased to corporations including a Hollywood studio for TV-set storage and a sports facility.
“I became familiar with the lawsuit, and immediately as I did, I said, this doesn’t make any sense,” said VA Secretary Robert McDonald at a press conference on Wednesday night.
The new goal is to get all veterans off the streets by the end of 2015, he announced.
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