the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 11, 2024
A U.S. Federal District Judge has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to build housing for homeless veterans on the vast 400-acre property of the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center.
About 3,000 of the homeless in Los Angeles are war veterans. On paper, this VA center is tasked to serve the needs of these homeless veterans. But this vast center is currently housing only around 140 homeless veterans in so-called “tiny shelters.”
The VA center is surrounded by three very wealthy neighborhoods: West Los Angeles, Westwood and Brentwood. Bowing to the pressures of these rich and powerful neighborhoods, the VA center acted like a real-estate schemer and leased portions of its land to various private businesses. They even allowed the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) to build its baseball stadium and practice field on this property, which was supposed to serve the needs of veterans.
Pointing to this history, Judge David O. Carter, himself a wounded Vietnam war veteran, ordered the VA to immediately begin constructing 750 units of temporary housing and another 1,800 units of permanent housing by 2030, in addition to the units already promised. But even if the VA fulfills the judge’s orders, many war veterans will remain homeless for many years.
In fact, considering that Los Angeles County officially has more than 75,000 homeless people on any single day, this court order hardly scratches the surface of the huge, and worsening, homelessness crisis throughout the region.