After the second killing in six months, the big brass showed up. A U.S. military veteran had been stabbed to death at a homeless camp in West LA after an argument in a tent on the sidewalk; this followed an earlier homicide at the same camp in April. In October, shortly after the stabbing, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough flew to Los Angeles. He toured the encampment, known as Veterans Row, and soon made two big promises.
First, he said, the 40 veterans living at the Veterans Row encampment — built from a few dozen tents, flags and tarps on a sidewalk beside the VA’s West Los Angeles medical campus — would be housed by November.
Second, the VA would ensure that another 500 homeless veterans in LA County moved into housing by the end of the year.
An estimated 3,900 vets live unhoused in Los Angeles — the largest concentration in the country — and progress on ending veteran homelessness in LA, McDonough said, could hasten efforts nationwide.
“As we solve the problem there, we give momentum to our efforts across the country,” he said.
Now VA officials say they’ve fulfilled those promises. Besides the 40 veterans from Veterans Row, they say they’d housed 537 additional veterans as of early December. But their success depends on a definition of housing that includes some temporary beds, even though the veterans in those beds are still considered homeless under the federal government’s own definition. Because of that, some critics argue that the VA is not meeting the spirit of its promises.
Click here to read full article.