{"id":160859,"date":"2024-09-09T08:05:28","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T12:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=160859"},"modified":"2024-09-08T16:18:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-08T20:18:19","slug":"judge-hammers-us-department-of-veterans-affairs-in-ruling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=160859","title":{"rendered":"Judge hammers US Department of Veterans Affairs in ruling"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs campus in West Lost Angeles came under hot water as a result of a lawsuit filed by homeless veterans. The VA illegally leased a portion of their West L.A. campus to a baseball team, an oil company, and other groups who did not qualify for the leases. The judge also criticized that the West L.A. VA as corrupt, as bribery infected, and as falling under the influence of powerful lobbyists.<\/p>\n

From NBC Lost Angeles:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In a hard-hitting, sometimes-shocking ruling that blasts the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for “turning its back” on the disabled veterans it was designed to help, a federal judge today ordered additional permanent housing on the agency’s West Los Angeles campus.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter also determined that the department has been illegally leasing portions of the campus to a private school, UCLA’s baseball team, an oil company, and other private interests — and ordered those contracts terminated.<\/p>\n

In the 125-page ruling, Carter wrote that the “cost of the VA’s inaction is veterans’ lives.”<\/p>\n

The judge’s findings were issued Friday following a month-long trial of a lawsuit lodged in Los Angeles federal court against the VA by a group of unhoused veterans with disabilities, challenging land lease agreements and seeking housing on the campus for veterans in need, many of whom are homeless or must travel for hours to see their doctors.<\/p>\n

Over the past five decades, Carter wrote, the VA in West L.A. “has been infected by bribery, corruption, and the influence of the powerful and their lobbyists, and enabled by a major educational institution in excluding veterans’ input about their own lands.”<\/p>\n

Carter, himself a Vietnam War veteran, found that the VA “has allowed the drastic reduction of the size of the original plot of land deeded in 1888 to be an Old Soldiers’ Home. In a series of lengthy, renewable leases, the VA authorized leaseholders to build permanent athletic facilities — after permitting these concrete structures to be built on veterans’ land.”<\/p>\n

The judge held that for years the VA — budgeted at $407 billion annually — has “quietly sold off” land badly needed for injured and homeless military veterans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additional Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n

City News Service. (2024, September 7). Judge blasts VA, orders more housing for veterans on West LA campus. NBC Lost Angeles<\/em>. Link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs campus in West Lost Angeles came under hot water as … Judge hammers US Department of Veterans Affairs in ruling<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226,118,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-in-the-news","category-veterans-issues","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}