There is a new team in town that’s trying to do something about addressing the needs of homeless veterans.
Things that used to happen at a glacial speed are now ramping up.
We have a new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert McDonald, who is pushing the cause of homeless veterans as a top priority. He is taking his direction from our commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama.
Secretary McDonald helped settle a lawsuit with veteran activists and installed some top lieutenants, Vince Kane and Michael Huff, whose charge it is to get something meaningful done.
Let’s think of all that has changed this last year alone.
Almost immediately upon the arrival of the new team last January, several top officials at the West L.A. campus departed the scene. Something clearly was cooking.
The big ACLU lawsuit that had been dragging on for years got settled.
Building 209 is finally open for business, providing shelter to formerly homeless veterans. More beds and vouchers good for housing in the private sector have been made available.
A public outreach and planning process is underway that, from the outside looking in, seems a little hard to understand, but I’m told there will be some exciting announcements coming soon. Mid-October is the stated goal for releasing a draft master plan. That’s only a month away.
Meanwhile, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congressman Ted Lieu are working to generate the funds that will be needed to support the new VA plan, however it shapes up. City and state officials, including L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Assemblyman Richard Bloom, and L.A. Councilman Mike Bonin are on board. They all agree it’s time to do something.
Those with leases on campus are scrambling to show how “pro-veteran” they can be so as to justify their continued presence on campus. This includes, of course, UCLA and Brentwood School. I think everyone should remain open to win-win partnerships.
The Brentwood Community Council has expressed an interest in being helpful.
There can be no doubt something new is going on over at the VA. The stars all seem to be in alignment.
A year ago it would have been pretty unthinkable that we’d find ourselves in this new and improved place today.
There has been more movement in the direction of progress in the last six months than I can recall seeing in the 24 years the Brentwood News has been covering goings on over at the VA.
Despite all this progress, some veteran activists are saying all this is new VA activity is a sham, that nothing the VA does will ever work and that all the top officials should all be fired.
If it’s truly a sham, it’s a brilliant performance, deserving of an Oscar, to be sure.
I don’t think it’s a sham. It’s clear to me the people over at the VA are trying. It’s a big bureaucratic system, to be sure, the funding outlook isn’t clear, there are, as yet, no clear marching orders.
Even an effort as highly planned as D-Day was messy in the first few brutal days.
War is always messy. Things go wrong, adjustments get made, the direction is, it
