President Trump signed on Friday a decree leading the department of veterans to create a national independence center for veterans for homeless on his West Los Angeles campus.
The ordinance set the objective of accommodating up to 6,000 old-fashioned veterans in the center and ordered the federal agencies of “ensuring that funds that may have been spent on housing or other illegal foreigners services are redirected to build, establish and maintain it”.
Trump ordered the Secretary Doug Collins to prepare an action plan to create accommodation by January 1, 2028. He also ordered Collins to present himself within 60 days on “options such as the expansion of office hours, offer meetings on weekends and increase the use of virtual health care”.
“Too many veterans are homeless in America,” said the order. “Each veteran deserves our gratitude. However, the federal government has not always dealt with veterans like the heroes they are. ”
Trump criticized the Biden administration for “shamefully, defaulting veterans when they needed help and betraying taxpayers who rightly expect better.”
The order comes at a critical moment in a trace of dispute on the management of the VA of the campus. A decision is expected any day in the 9th Circuit Court of American Appeals on the decision of a federal judge that the VA had failed a trustee obligation to provide housing to veterans. The judge of the American district court David O. Carter ordered the VA to immediately create around 100 temporary housing units on the 388 acres campus and build a total of more than 2,000 permanent and temporary housing units. He also invalidated leases from these lands to civil entities, including UCLA and a private school.
The VA has appealed the decision containing, in addition to other legal arguments, which the cost would irreparably harm other services to veterans.
Although the immediate effect on the case was not clear, the veterans considered it a positive sign.
“Many veterans I have spoken so far are very happy to see that the White House has taken this position about West of West Los Angeles,” said Rob Reynolds, a veteran of the war in Iraq who testified in the case of his frustrations helping the homeless veterans in search of housing on the campus. “Just to know that there was an executive decree signed for more accommodation on VA Land, it’s a huge victory for us. This is something that veterinarians have been fighting for years.”
The Collective Veterans, a development and service partnership that has a contract will build around 1,200 support housing units on the campus, has published a statement saying that “President Trump’s plan enjugated with enthusiasm for a national center for homeless veterans” and said that it is impatiently waiting to welcome it to the campus.
The group strives to complete the 1,200 units by the end of Trump’s mandate, he said.
“With more than 1,000 veterans who are already living on campus today, it would be a wonderful opportunity for them to meet the commander -in -chief,” said the press release. “He would also be the first president to see our progress.”
Another veteran who criticized the management of the campus by the VA was more kept.
“The president’s decree is A Good thing but not yet THE The good thing, “said Anthony Allman, executive of Vets Advocacy, a non -profit organization created to monitor the development of a master plan which stems from a previous trial.
Allman maintains that the master plan provides more than accommodation and envisages a center of activity and services for veterans on and outside the campus.
“We are impatient to work with the administration to do the right things – the development of the community and the workforce – available for veterans of the historic ownership of the Pacific branch,” said Allman, using the historic name for the House of Disabled Soldiers created in the 19th century.
In a long preamble, the order delimited this first story by the outbreak of the housing of veterans in the 1970s to inappropriate leases from the grounds of veterans who led to the two prosecution.
“The campus once presented a chapel, billiard hall, a 1,000-seat theater and hosted around 6,000 veterans, but the federal government has since enabled this gem of the veterans’ care crown to deteriorate in recent decades,” he said. “The veterans department has rented parties of property to a private school, private companies and the Baseball team of the University of California in Los Angeles, sometimes at prices significantly lower than it.
“In 2024, there were about 3,000 old-fashioned veterans in Los Angeles, more than in any other city in the country and representing around 10% of all the veterans of the American homeless. Many of these heroes live in the sadness of the infamous `Skid Row. ” From Los Angeles.
Trump called on more responsibility, ordering Collins to rectify the Biden administration’s decision to “re -hire and reintegrate the salary of the employees previously dismissed for fault” and to take the appropriate measures against the persons who committed a fault. »»
The order also demanded an action plan to extend the Manchester medical center goes to New Hampshire to a full-service medical center “so that it is no longer the only state in contiguous United States” without one.
California Daily Newspapers
