Trump executive order envisions housing homeless veterans at VA center in West L.A.

President Trump signed an executive bid Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to make a halfway for stateless veterans connected its West Los Angeles campus.

The bid acceptable a extremity of lodging up to 6,000 stateless veterans astatine the center, which Trump named the National Warrior Independence Center, and ordered national agencies to “ensure that funds that whitethorn person been spent connected lodging oregon different services for amerciable aliens are redirected to construct, establish, and maintain” it.

Trump ordered VA Secretary Doug Collins to hole an enactment program to make the lodging by Jan. 1, 2028. He besides ordered Collins to study wrong 60 days connected “options similar expanding bureau hours, offering play appointments, and expanding the usage of virtual healthcare.”

“Too galore veterans are stateless successful America,” the bid said. “Each seasoned deserves our gratitude. Yet the Federal Government has not ever treated veterans similar the heroes they are.”

As portion of the enactment plan, Trump ordered the caput of Housing and Urban Development to consult with Collins connected utilizing “vouchers to enactment stateless veterans successful the Los Angeles metropolitan country and astir the Nation with respect to this effort.”

The Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, commonly known arsenic HUD-VASH, provides vouchers that veterans tin usage for lodging connected the field and successful rentals successful the community. Delays successful processing applications and landlord resistance to accepting the vouchers person near galore of them unused. In 2024, the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System reported that determination were 8,453 HUD-VASH lodging vouchers disposable for greater Los Angeles but lone 62% were successful use.

The inaugural comes amid the Trump administration’s projected cuts to VA staffing that person sparked disapproval from Democratic lawmakers of wide disruptions crossed the agency’s healthcare system.

“There are real-life unsafe impacts for veterans,” Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania said Thursday pursuing an investigation by the investigative quality tract ProPublica.

The bid comes astatine a captious infinitesimal successful a way of litigation implicit the VA’s absorption of the campus. A determination is expected immoderate time from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals connected a national judge’s ruling that the VA had failed a fiduciary work to supply lodging for veterans. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered the VA to instantly make astir 100 units of impermanent lodging connected the 388-acre field and to physique much than 2,000 units of imperishable and impermanent housing. He besides invalidated leases of portions of that onshore to civilian entities including UCLA and a backstage school.

The VA appealed the decision, contending, successful summation to different ineligible arguments, that the outgo would irreparably harm different services to veterans.

Although the contiguous effect connected the lawsuit was unclear, veterans took Trump’s enforcement bid arsenic a affirmative sign.

“A batch of the veterans I’ve spoken to truthful acold are precise blessed to spot that the White House has taken this presumption astir the West Los Angeles VA,” said Rob Reynolds, an Iraq warfare seasoned who testified successful the lawsuit astir his frustrations helping stateless veterans seeking lodging connected the campus. “Just to cognize that determination was an enforcement bid signed for much lodging connected VA land, that’s a immense triumph for us. That’s thing vets person been warring for for years.”

The Veterans Collective, a improvement and work concern that has a VA declaration to conception astir 1,200 units of supportive lodging connected the campus, issued a connection saying that it “enthusiastically applauds President Trump’s program for a nationalist halfway for stateless veterans” and said it looks guardant to welcoming him to the field soon.

The radical is moving to implicit the 1,200 units by the extremity of Trump’s term, it said.

“With much than 1,000 Veterans already surviving connected field today, it would beryllium a fantastic accidental for them to conscionable with the Commander-in-Chief,” the connection said. “He would besides beryllium the archetypal President to spot our progress.”

Another seasoned who has been captious of the VA’s handling of the field improvement was much guarded.

“The President’s Executive Order is a close happening but not yet the close thing,” said Anthony Allman, enforcement of Vets Advocacy, a nonprofit created to show improvement of a maestro program that arose from an earlier lawsuit.

Allman notes that the bid outlines a program for much than conscionable lodging and envisions a halfway of enactment and services for veterans connected and disconnected the campus.

“We look guardant to moving with the medication to marque the close things — housing, community, workforce improvement — disposable to veterans astatine the historical Pacific Branch property,” Allman said, utilizing the historical sanction for the disabled soldiers location created determination successful the 19th century.

In a lengthy preamble, Trump’s enforcement bid alluded to immoderate of that history, including the closing of veterans’ lodging successful the 1970s and improper leases of veterans’ onshore that led to the 2 lawsuits.

“The field erstwhile featured a chapel, billiard hall, 1,000-seat theater, and housed astir 6,000 veterans, but the Federal Government has since allowed this crown jewel of seasoned attraction to deteriorate implicit the past fewer decades,” it said. “The Department of Veterans Affairs leased parts of the spot to a backstage school, backstage companies, and the shot squad of the University of California, Los Angeles, sometimes astatine importantly below-market prices.

“As of 2024, determination were astir 3,000 stateless veterans successful Los Angeles, much than successful immoderate different metropolis successful the state and accounting for astir 10 percent of each of America’s stateless veterans. Many of these heroes unrecorded successful squalor successful Los Angeles’s infamous ‘Skid Row.’”

The bid besides required an enactment program to grow the Manchester VA Medical Center successful New Hampshire to a full-service aesculapian halfway “so that it is nary longer the lone State successful the contiguous United States” without one.