CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“HOMELESS VETERANS A HUGE, NEGLECTED PROBLEM”
You didn’t hear a word about homeless
veterans in President Obama’s State of the Union speech last January and
chances are you won’t hear anything from him about those vets next month,
either, unless it’s a boilerplate homage for their contributions to American
freedom.
But homeless veterans are a major
national problem, and an even larger one in California, where an estimated
18,000 live on the streets of Los Angeles County alone, perhaps as many as
40,000 statewide.
And yet…hundreds of beds in veterans
homes are empty today. It’s true those veterans homes, mostly run by the state
Department of Veterans Affairs, are intended as both skilled nursing and
assisted living facilities, not as homeless shelters. Nevertheless, it’s
logical to wonder why those vacant beds can’t be pressed into service for
veterans in desperate need of quarters.
There are also open questions about
whether the largest and most valuable piece of real estate in this state
intended solely for the use of veterans will ever be used to anything
approaching its capacity – or whether much of it will be sold off as a
momentary deficit-easing tactic.
More than 300 acres at the West Los
Angeles Veterans Administration Center are used far below their capacity,
something that has drawn the eye of Republican House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor of Virginia, who tried to insert a selloff into this year’s budget
negotiations.
The draw for Cantor and others is that
the mostly undeveloped VA land bounded by the I-405 San Diego Freeway and busy
Wilshire Boulevard, with multiple high-rises soaring upward nearby, could bring
at least $5 billion.
This has long tempted a selloff,
despite the terms of the original 1887 land donation by onetime Nevada
Republican Sen. John P. Jones and his partner Arcadia B. de Baker, which
required the land be used strictly “for the benefit of veterans.” Jones, a real
estate developer and co-founder of the city of Santa Monica who made his
fortune in silver mining, had Civil War veterans in mind, not knowing
homelessness would be a major veterans’ problem 125 years later.
But it is, and not even the new
California Veterans Homes constructed over the last 10 years with a combination
of federal funds and state bond money are helping much. As an example, only 87
of the 396 beds in the West Los Angeles CalVet home were occupied as of last
month. Brand-new homes in Redding and Fresno, with 450 beds between them, were
empty because state budget woes have prevented hiring any staff. No occupants
are expected there until late this year at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Councilman
Bill Rosendahl, himself a Vietnam veteran, and former Santa Monica Mayor Bobby
Shriver, whose sister Maria was the state’s First Lady for seven years, several
years ago identified three mostly derelict buildings at the West Los Angeles
site that could be rehabilitated and used by homeless veterans with
post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental and emotional ills. Only one of
those buildings has seen any activity, with $50 million appropriated to fix it
up, but no work yet done.
Rosendahl blasted Democratic Sen.
Dianne Feinstein and Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of Los Angeles County
– the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee –
in an interview. “They just have not done nearly enough either to save the VA
land or to house needy veterans,” he said. “Someone needs to light a fire under
them.”
Waxman, whose district includes the
West Los Angeles site, calls veterans’ homelessness “a huge problem and
terrible.” He acknowledges that “We have failed our veterans.” But he insisted
in a telephone interview that “the real threat we face is selling the land to
reduce debt and not using it to help veterans.”
He says a new law passed last August
which some veterans’ activists claim allows selling off the land actually
precludes ever selling it. “A lot of the veterans’ concerns are just
inaccurate,” he said. “But I do share the worry about commercializing that
land.”
Veterans’ activists also complain that
few of their fellow former soldiers even know about the CalVet beds now
languishing. “There’s been almost no marketing,” complains John Aaron of
Pacific Palisades. Echoing Rosendahl, he added that “The politicians just have
not done enough.”
Waxman says he’s “all for using the
empty beds for homeless veterans. I will push the Department of Veterans
Affairs to do it. We did get the VA to issue vouchers for veterans to use in
the community and we were getting some into housing, but the VA has stopped
issuing those recently. The gap is due to VA bureaucracy. We push and push, but
they seem unable to move. It’s inexcusable that they’ve stopped issuing the
vouchers.”
The bottom line: There really is no
excuse when politicians say they're trying to help veterans and then point
fingers at others, while thousands of veterans keep living on California’s
streets.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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