“Somehow at some point” Part 1
The VA claims it wants to house veterans, but not in the ways the Powers court prescribes.
“Somehow at some point” parts 1 and 2 were originally published together by CityWatchLA in their newsletter on December 5th, 2024.
I’m Ruth @roofless and I write about homelessness and housing in the City of Los Angeles. I’ve lived on the streets here continuously for seven years and first experienced displacement in 2003. I write a Substack series with USC whistleblower about the legal landscape of landlessness in LA. Zach has made himself a fixture in the courtroom of U.S. Judge David O. Carter, where major settlements affecting the unhoused like LA Alliance, addressing our civil rights and compelling “bed” creation, are enforced. In another settled lawsuit overseen by Carter, veteran plaintiffs led by Jeffery Powers sued the V.A. over illegal leases and insufficient housing at the West LA Soldiers’ Home.
In part 1, I dive into the most recent Powers hearing and revisit a 2019 displacement of veterans from Echo Park which coincided with a near-cessation of veterans’ housing voucher awards. In part 2, I interrogate top-paid homeless advocates for aligning with gentrification goals over housing and healing and suggest a simple solution.
“There's one [unhoused veteran] across the street, one tent across the street from this courthouse today.”
Attorneys for a plaintiff class of unhoused veterans in Powers v McDonough pointed to the American flag-draped tent outside the new federal courthouse on First Street during a hearing on Wednesday, November 13th, two days after Veteran’s Day, objecting to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ motion to stay the district court’s October 11th judgment.
Hours later, the patriotic tent was gone, and a new fence erected where the humble shelter stood for months. Obstructive panels of rented chain link blocked an entire Metro bus stop, attracting a ticket on 11/19 from the City’s Bureau of Street Services Investigation and Enforcement Division, as reported by L.A. TACO journalist Lexis Olivier-Ray. The occupant of the tent, presumably an unhoused veteran, therefore a member of the now-settled Powers plaintiff class, was nowhere to be seen.
A quote obtained by Olivier-Ray from Zach Siedl of Mayor Karen Bass’ office explained that an Inside Safe operation had indeed occurred on Wednesday, November 13th. But with the nearby L.A. Grand Hotel, a Project Roomkey-turned-Inside Safe whose fugitive owner is entangled in corruption with imprisoned former downtown councilman José Huizar, having completed a final “demobilization” months ago, it’s unclear where those affected by the operation ended up.
Inside Safe operations are “sweeps”, as evidenced by their inclusion on CARE/CARE+ Sanitation schedules, and the well-being of the displaced comes secondary to the stunning (in a good or bad way, depending on your perspective) “before” and “after” photos. Accountability at and after these operations is difficult. Olivier-Ray himself was recently handcuffed and placed in the back of a black-and-white LAPD SUV while observing one of these operations as media.
Veterans in LA are not strangers to displacement.
In 2019, 72 veterans were displaced in Echo Park when the VA was outbid on a cluster of cottages operating a safe haven program called “The Billets”. The VA was used to paying Gateways Hospital $1M per year for use of nine residential units on their property, which the VA secured in an annual competitive bidding process. The cottages, located on a residential street, were used for a transitional housing program ran by nonprofit operator Volunteers of America “VOALA”.
In 2019, a mystery bidder’s $1.4M offer topped the VA’s, and the veterans were told to report to Salvation Army’s shelter in Bell. The shelter is eleven miles away from Echo Park, in an old armory the City of Bell acquired in a 1985 trade with the federal government.
LA Times’ Gale Holland sympathetically covered The Billets’ closing at the time, but did not disclose the identity of the “mystery bidder”, which may not have been known.
It has since been revealed that the bidder who defeated the VA was in fact LA’s Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA”, which wanted 14 of Gateways’ cottages for a new family shelter. The project secured $500,000 in discretionary homelessness prevention funds from County Supervisor Hilda Solis.
Barry Lank wrote about the new shelter opening under operator The Whole Child for The Eastsider on October 9, 2019:
“The project was funded by $1.4 million from the Los Angeles Housing [sic] Services Authority, with a shortfall of around $500,000 being covered by Supervisor Solis’ discretionary Homeless Preventative Initiative funds.”
LAHSA and the VA are the last two entities that should be engaging in a bidding battle that takes 72 veterans off a therapeutic track for permanent housing. It is even more inappropriate that LAHSA were aided by County Supervisor Solis’ discretionary homeless prevention initiative funds.
A CPRA to the County CEO for clarification on how much discretion is allowed when allocating homeless prevention funds hasn’t delivered any materials so far, but it’s interesting to observe all of the main public advocates with access to resources for the unhoused instead aligning with gentrification goals of bringing in a younger crowd, and pushing older, disabled people out.
LAHSA is supposed to serve the general unhoused population as well as veterans who can’t or won’t associate with the VA, such as those who are unsheltered in LA anywhere off the VA’s West LA property and those with discharges other-than-honorable. Both LAHSA and the VA have access to federal subsidies through the City and County’s Public Housing Authorities “PHAs”, The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles “The HACLA” and the LA County Development Authority, “LACDA”, respectively.
Indeed, for six years prior to LAHSA’s acquisition of the cottages, the transitional “safe haven” program dubbed “The Billets” was operated under a “harm reduction” model in which 70% of participants exited to permanent subsidized housing with services facilitated by the use of U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department - Veterans Affairs Supportive Services “HUD-VASH” vouchers.
On the peaceful grounds of Gateways hospital, veterans had been able to keep service animals, have guests and use medical marijuana with a license. They enjoyed their “walkable” neighborhood and became regular patrons of a nearby coffee shop. They voluntarily graduated to permanent housing, an upgrade from the shared Gateways cottages, making room for more veterans in the program, and making good use of federal assistance.
When The Billets shut down, HUD-VASH awards seemed to stop as well.
Federal housing support for veterans slowed to a trickle in 2019 and has not recovered.
It used to be that LA City and County’s PHAs, The HACLA and LACDA, could receive referrals from LAHSA and the VA to get veterans permanently housed, as the PHAs manage federal subsidies in the form of Housing Choice Vouchers “HCV” (commonly called “Section 8”) and HUD-VASH vouchers. HUD-VASH data during the six years of The Billets’ operation shows both the City and County’s public housing authorities, The HACLA and LACDA, receiving several hundred vouchers per year while The Billets was in operation from FY13-18:
Combined HUD-VASH awards to The HACLA (City) + LACDA (County) by Fiscal Year, including Project-Based Voucher “PBV” awards
Data: HUD
FY • [CA002 + CA004 + PBVs]
08 • 840
09 • 385
10 • 525
11 • 300
12 • 800
13 • 775
14 • 847
15 • 755
16 • 586
17 • 816
18 • 678
19 • 0
20 • 500
21 • 0
22 • 500
23 • 0
The City’s public housing authority, The HACLA, received 250 HUD-VASH vouchers in the five-year period from FY19-23, an average of 50/year, with all of them coming in one award in FY22. In the same time period, the County’s public housing authority, LACDA, got 750 vouchers, or 150/year for those five years.
In 2019, the same year The Billets closed, Los Angeles’ award of HUD-VASH vouchers was zero for the City and County. HUD-VASH vouchers have barely trickled into LA’s housing authorities since.
For the 11 years prior, FY08-18, the City and County got an average of 700 combined vouchers per year. The City received zero vouchers in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023. For three of the four years for which City didn’t receive a HUD-VASH allotment, 2019, 2021, and 2023, the County also got zero HUD-VASH vouchers.
The loss of 500 vouchers per year for over five years is nearly equal to the current number of unhoused veterans believed to be on the streets of LA: 3,000.
The unavailability of HUD-VASH would have the effect of forcing veterans to access mainstream “Section 8” or rely on attrition, which is when a veteran loses or relinquishes a voucher, which can then be “recycled” by another veteran or family.
More realistically, it has the effect of flag-draped tents around the City…
Read or listen to Part 2 of “Somehow at some point”.
Originally published in CityWatchLA on December 5th, 2024.
Illustrations made from prompts on Wombo’s free Dream.ai app for iOS. Graph made on Canva.
Special thanks to those who sacrificed for our country, including my relatives who fought fascists in World War II, and the young unhoused veteran who spoke to me at length, condemning war and America’s violence on Veteran’s Day last month.
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This is complicated material. Thank you for your excellent reporting. It sounds as if Vets are made to accept a poorer deal to get vouchers or permanent housing into younger people's hands, is that it?
Also, excuse my ignorance, but why are these organizations bidding huge sums of money to provide interim shelter to Vets? This seems so convoluted. City, county or state funded organizations offering payment to the federally funded VA? Am I missing something?