Housing Vets

From the LA Times:

"VA proposes hundreds of housing units plus services for homeless vets at West L.A. campus"

 

Federal officials released a blueprint Thursday for transforming the long-neglected West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus into a residential community with hundreds of housing units for homeless veterans, offering some potential relief as Los Angeles struggles to deal with an increase in homelessness across the city. The plan calls for construction of 1,200 permanent supportive housing units for disabled and traumatized veterans and more than 700 short-term units for homeless veterans in the midst of some of the city’s toniest neighborhoods. Some permanent housing could open as soon as next year, officials said, perhaps by adapting some of the 388-acre property’s historic buildings. The proposed new community would mark one of the most significant efforts to create new housing for the region’s rising homeless population, which is estimated to exceed 44,000 in Los Angeles County. The proposal includes a village for women, many of whom suffered sexual trauma in the military, gardens where veterans can relax and grow their own food, theaters, sports fields and gym facilities. Hammered out in months of meetings with veterans and community members, the project is also designed to serve as a beacon for non-homeless veterans, who can use the campus for recreation, cultural events and job development, as well as medical care, officials said.  “There’s amphitheaters, recreation facilities, everything for the physical health, the mental health and the spiritual health of veterans,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald said at a news conference. “They are going to try to make a community out of it,” said Steve Peck, president of U.S. Vets, a homeless veteran service group. Mayor Eric Garcetti last year vowed to house all homeless veterans by the end of 2015, but has since pushed back that deadline to later this year. He said Thursday that the number of homeless veterans in the city had dropped to fewer than 800. A survey last year estimated that there were about 2,700. Federal legislation must be approved to enable public-private partnerships to develop the housing. The development would be built on VA land and financed with public and private funds, backed by rent vouchers from the VA. Officials said the housing and services, as well as hundreds of federal rent subsidies for veterans that have flooded Los Angeles in recent years, would reverse the area’s distinction as the homeless veteran capital of the nation.

 

 

^ I hope this housing plan goes from thought to concrete. It could serve as a model for other cities and other states on how to help both homeless and non-homeless veterans. They did so much for us and for the most part the American Government and  the American people have forgotten them and that's just not right. We need to reverse that and start doing what we should have done the minute these men and women left the military. ^

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-va-property-plan-20160128-story.html