Here’s a scorecard on affordable residential development to check before the World Series gets started tonight at Dodger Stadium.
Housing for military veterans at Jackie Robinson Stadium at the VA campus in West Los Angeles: 1.
UCLA, which leases the site of the 10-acre stadium: 0.
The umpire in this matter is a federal judge who has rejected UCLA’s bid to delay an emergency order for the construction of veterans housing on parking lots next to the university’s shuttered ball yard at 100 Constitution Avenue, City News Service reported.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter previously ordered that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs immediately design homes for vets on the paved lots on the 388-acre West L.A. VA Campus.
Carter’s Oct. 7 emergency order held that “with fall and winter approaching and with thousands of homeless veterans still living on the streets, an emergency exists.”
This week, the judge said the situation requires “immediate and streamlined action in order to build and make ready for occupancy temporary supportive housing on (the) VA campus as soon as possible.”
Attorneys for the university recently sought to intervene into a broader lawsuit and delay construction of temporary housing on stadium parking lots — a motion filed by the university after veterans’ claims challenging UCLA’s lease were litigated by the court.
Carter’s decision follows a month-long federal trial in August filed by homeless veterans and those with disabilities. The vets, who had challenged land lease agreements to UCLA and other entities operating on the VA campus, sought housing for veterans in need.
The judge, an 80-year-old Vietnam war vet, found for the veterans, according to City News.
During the non-jury trial, the VA argued that it was out of room on its sprawling campus — and that the lack of acreage precludes an increase to the 1,200 housing units the agency promised to open by 2030.
VA attorneys alleged any relief ordered by the court would burden the department financially and deprive it of the flexibility needed to solve veteran homelessness.
The court found that veterans are entitled to more than 2,500 units of housing at the campus.
After finding that land-use agreements with UCLA’s baseball team, the affluent Brentwood School, an oil company and other private interests on the West L.A. campus were illegal, Carter terminated the leases.
The court is now devising “exit strategies” for former tenants in order to ensure the land — including 10 acres leased to UCLA and 22 acres to the Brentwood School — is put to a use that principally benefits veterans.
Carter recently directed the VA to build 750 units of temporary housing within 18 months and to form a plan to add another 1,800 units of permanent housing to the roughly 1,200 units already in planning and construction under the settlement terms of an earlier lawsuit.
The judge said the VA, with an annual budget of $407 billion, has “quietly sold off” land badly needed for homeless military veterans.
UCLA remains locked out of the stadium on the VA’s grounds, its Bruins baseball team practicing on fields in the San Fernando Valley.
— Dana Bartholomew
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