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Judge blasts VA, orders more housing for veterans on West LA campus – NBC Los Angeles

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Judge blasts VA, orders more housing for veterans on West LA campus – NBC Los Angeles

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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.

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.

In the 125-page ruling, Carter wrote that the “cost of the VA’s inaction is veterans’ lives.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement that the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation but is reviewing the judge’s decision.

The VA “will continue to do everything in our power to end veteran homelessness — both in Los Angeles and across America,” Hayes said. “No veteran should be homeless in this country they swore to defend, and we will
not rest until veteran homelessness is a thing of the past.”

He added, “VA is committed to providing permanent supportive housing to homeless veterans on the grounds of the West L.A. campus as quickly as possible. We will stop at nothing to end veteran homelessness, including through ensuring that critical funding and resources get into the hands of those who need it most. VA will continue to take every action and make every investment available to us to meet this critical goal.”

During trial, the VA argued that it is out of space on its 388-acre campus, and that the lack of available acreage precludes any increase to the 1,200 housing units the agency promised to open by 2030. VA attorneys alleged that any relief ordered by the court would burden the department financially and deprive it of the flexibility needed to solve veteran homelessness.

“The problem, however, is one of the VA’s own making,” Carter wrote, adding that VA land in West L.A. must “once again be available for its intended purpose: the housing of veterans.”

In a previous order, Carter determined that the VA had discriminated against “the most injured and traumatized veterans” by counting their disability payments as income and thus disqualifying them from housing on the campus.

“Now, the West L.A. VA promises they finally have a plan that will end veteran homelessness in Los Angeles — but only if the plaintiffs leave them alone and the court does not issue an injunction,” the judge wrote. “After years of broken promises, corruption, and neglect, it is no surprise that veterans are unwilling to take them at their word.”

Ultimately, the court found that veterans are entitled to more than 2,500 units of housing at the campus “and termination of the illegal land-use agreements.”

It was not immediately clear what would become of the outside organizations’ leases on the campus, including UCLA’s Jackie Robinson baseball stadium and the affluent Brentwood School’s athletic complex on prime West Los Angeles real estate deeded to veterans. Leases were also awarded to an oil driller and a parking lot operator whose lots chiefly benefit Brentwood merchants, court papers show.

A UCLA representative said Friday that the university and the VA have had a “longstanding public service partnership” over more than 70 years.

“Working with the VA to serve veterans continues to be one of our key objectives as part of UCLA’s mission of teaching, research and public service,” according to UCLA. “We are reviewing the judge’s decision to determine how it will affect our partnership with the VA.”

In a statement, the Brentwood School maintained that its lease with the VA “complies with federal law, according to the 2016 West LA Leasing Act. While we are still examining the full implications of the ruling, it would be a significant loss for many veterans if the extensive services we provide were eliminated.”

Carter said the court would begin to determine an “exit strategy” for the lease holders at a Sept. 25 hearing in order to ensure the land — including 10 acres rented to UCLA — is put to a use that principally benefits veterans.

According to Carter, roughly 3,000 homeless veterans live in the Los Angeles area alone — and each administration since 2011 has been warned — by the VA’s own Office of the Inspector General, federal courts, and veterans themselves — that the department was not doing enough to house them.

The judge’s ruling Friday orders the VA to build 750 units of temporary housing within 18 months and to form a plan within six months to add another 1,800 units of permanent housing to the roughly 1,200 units already in planning and construction under the settlement terms of an earlier lawsuit.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, a Los Angeles-based public interest law firm, said Carter’s ruling restores the land to its intended purpose, “to serve as a soldier’s home … not as a playground for UCLA baseball players and Brentwood high school students.”

The VA’s poor decisions left disabled veterans “unhoused on the meanest streets of Los Angeles when their government deserted them in their time of need,” Rosenbaum said.

“This nation cannot genuinely hold itself out as the home of the brave so long as the brave have no home,” he said.

Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran and longtime plaintiffs’ advocate, added: “The judge saw what all of us have seen — that the VA has willfully entered into illegal land use agreements … on land that was intended to house our veterans. And as a result of that, thousands of veterans are sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles.”

The West L.A. campus remains the chief health care facility for veterans in Southern California. The VA’s Veterans Health Administration is required to provide preventive and primary care, acute hospital care, mental health services, specialty care, and long-term care, which includes residential treatment and housing services, the judge wrote.

Many of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs — particularly those military veterans with traumatic brain injuries and serious mental illness — find it difficult to travel to the campus.

For example, according to the ruling, plaintiff Laurieann Wright, who lives with PTSD related to sexual assault she experienced during her military service, currently lives in VA-affiliated housing in Lancaster, about 65 miles away from the campus, but not by choice. Wright must commute up to three hours to access the West L.A. VA medical facilities.

“In addition to her PTSD, Ms. Wright has extensive physical disabilities and medical conditions including: osteoporosis, a neck injury she sustained after being thrown down the stairs while living on the sidewalk outside the VA,” Carter said.

In sum, the judge wrote, by failing to provide sufficient permanent supportive housing for veterans on or near the West L.A. grounds, and failing to provide temporary housing in the interim while permanent housing is constructed, the VA “consistently denies veterans with serious mental illness and traumatic brain injury meaningful access to the community-based VA health care, mental health care, and other critical supportive services they need and for which they are eligible.”

Carter wrote that both temporary and permanent housing units are critical in providing relief to the plaintiffs.

“Without temporary supportive housing, countless veterans may die on the streets or in shelters while waiting for permanent housing to be built,” the judge said.

To conclude, Carter wrote that what was once a home for disabled soldiers “must fully reopen its gates and become a robust community for veterans once again.”

“It is time for the VA’s leadership at the highest levels to recognize its obligation and mission statement to care for those who have borne the battle. It is time for the disabled veterans of Los Angeles to come home.”

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How the homeless can vote in Los Angeles County and across California – NBC Los Angeles

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October 14, 2024

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How the homeless can vote in Los Angeles County and across California – NBC Los Angeles

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Latinos, women and independents are among the voting blocks often discussed during elections.

One woman tells the NBC4 I-Team it is time to consider the homeless, a group she was once a part of.

The last count found more than 75,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles County and many of them may not realize that they can register to vote, including at county shelters and online.

“The main thing I feel for any homeless person, is you have to learn to become vocal, you know? That’s why we are invisible, because a lot of us tend to be so embarrassed, we don’t want to reach out for help,” Justice Butler said. 

The 65-year-old former radio disc jockey says she found herself homeless at various times in her life, from her hometown of Houston to Los Angeles. She now lives in a studio apartment near McArthur Park.  

One thing that never waned was her desire to be part of the voting process. 

“It means a lot every year, because the first time I’m voting, and I’m teary-eyed because of the people before me, and I’ve really learned to connect to my history,” Butler said. “They died and fought for this right to vote.”

Butler registered to vote while at a Los Angeles city shelter.  

“When I went into the shelter on Skid Row, they gave me all this paperwork to fill out, and one of it was a voter registration card,” she said.  

Her story is not unique.  

California law allows an unhoused or homeless voter to participate in the election, said Dean Logan, who oversees the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

“They can register to vote, they can list the cross street where they spend the most of their time, where they lay their head at night,” Logan said. 

“They can list the shelter where they’re staying for residents’ purposes that ensures they get the most localized ballot that’s effective for them,” he added. 

Logan tells the NBC4 I-Team, currently there are about 800 voters registered with an intersection address and then another approximately 5,500 voters who registered with a shelter, a church or similar place that provides services. 

Still there is the fact that every active registered voter in California receives a vote by mail ballot. 

“So you can list a mailing address. So a lot of those voters may list even a Department of Social Services address where they’re receiving information about their benefits or they can use a shelter address or a PO box to receive the voting materials,” Logan said.   

He says the fail-safe method remains the in-person vote centers, including mobile ones that the county sends to different neighborhoods.  

“We utilize that program to also go to homelessness encampments that are in North County or out in Long Beach or areas like that to ensure that we have access for those voters,” he said.  

The need goes beyond the homeless population.  

“This is a particular issue in this election because we know that there are a group of citizens who through the end of rent control after the pandemic have been displaced from their homes and may not receive their voting materials because they’re dealing with trying to find a new home or a new place to stay,” Logan said.  

Butler says she is battling a debilitating lung disease and is focused on issues that matter to her this election.  

“It’s about somebody having a plan for healthcare,” she said. 

Her message to others, no matter where they live is, is to vote.

“We got to go out to vote,” she said. “This time, we got to go out and vote, y’all, real.”

Vote by mail ballots have been mailed out.  Some of the dozens of in-person vote centers in Los Angeles County will open as soon as 11 days before election day and people can vote at any location, even registering on site. 

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Dodgers can’t overcome early six-run deficit in 7-3 loss to Mets in Game 2, NLCS even at one game apiece – NBC Los Angeles

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October 14, 2024

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Dodgers can’t overcome early six-run deficit in 7-3 loss to Mets in Game 2, NLCS even at one game apiece – NBC Los Angeles

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October baseball is infamous for its unscripted nature. Just when you think you can predict the outcome, a literal curveball gets thrown at you, flipping the script, turning everything topsy-turvy. 

The Los Angeles Dodgers threw a bullpen game with their season on the line in Game 4 of the NLDS against the San Diego Padres. 

Pundits, analysts, and experts alike all said it would be the end of the 2024 Dodgers. Instead, eight different relievers combined for a shutout, extending their season and their scoreless inning streak. 

Jack Flaherty and the bullpen threw another shutout in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday to tie the MLB record of 33 consecutive scoreless innings in the postseason. So another bullpen game in Game 2 with the same relievers lined up should reproduce the same results, right?

Wrong. 

Francisco Lindor snapped the scoreless streak with a leadoff homer in the first, and Mark Vientos broke the game open with a grand slam in the second, and the New York Mets defeated the Dodgers 7-3 in Game 2 to even the best-of-seven NLCS at one game apiece. 

“Everything is great when it works well and guys are throwing up zeros, but you’re still facing really good ball clubs,” said Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts of the bullpen game in Game 4 of the NLDS compared to Game 2 of the NLCS. “And there is a margin that you have to guard against and kind of really appreciate the cost of the next games, and not forgetting that this isn’t a winner-take-all game. It’s not a three-game series.”

Ironically, everyone in the extended baseball multiverse spent the last 24 hours praising the Dodgers pitching staff and wondering when or if they would allow another run. 

Flaherty said the pitchers were “feeding off each other,” after Game 1. On Monday they got eaten alive by the “OMG” Mets’ hitters. 

Lindor, likely the runner-up for MVP in the National League to Dodgers’ designated hitter Shohei Ohtani, hit the Mets sixth leadoff homer of the season, and first in the playoffs since Curtis Granderson in Game 5 of the 2015 World Series, when he crushed a cutter from opener Ryan Brasier sending the ball soaring into the New York bullpen for a 1-0 lead. 

Los Angeles went to right-hander Landon Knack for length, but instead of keeping the game close, he opened the flood gates, surrendering five runs in the second inning, including a back-breaking grand slam on the ninth pitch he threw to Vientos. 

“I really didn’t have a feel for things. I just wasn’t sharp today,” said Knack of what happened in the second inning. “I wasn’t able to execute pitches the way I normally do. I wasn’t able to put guys away. I kept leaving things middle.”

From that moment on, nothing happened on Monday afternoon that echoed anything that preceded it. The Dodgers scorching hot offense, that had produced 19 runs over their last three games, went dormant. The dominant pitching staff was ineffective and subordinate. 

Ohtani, who was 2-for-4 with two RBI and two runs scored in Game 1 was hitless with two strikeouts in Game 2. 

“I thought he didn’t look comfortable versus Manaea,” said Dave Roberts of what he saw from Ohtani at the plate today. “The heater is away. You can see he was just kind of trying to keep the ball away from Shohei.”

Sean Manaea, who entered the game with nearly an 8.00 ERA against the Dodgers in his career, silenced the most-lethal lineup in the Majors for the better part of five innings.

“He’s a really good pitcher,” said Mookie Betts of Manaea on Monday. “He’s been pitching really well lately and has a lot of confidence. He threw the ball well again today. We lost. It sucks. I don’t think anyone here was expecting them to roll over. We have to turn the page and prepare for Game 3 now.”

Manaea, who changed his arm angle in the offseason, delivering his best season since 2019 with the Oakland Athletics, allowed three runs (two earned), on two hits with four walks and seven strikeouts in five innings of work.

Maybe it was the early start time that did the Dodgers in. The Mets, who are still on Eastern Standard Time are accustomed to afternoon starts. Los Angeles hasn’t had one since the final game of the regular season on September 29th. 

The Dodgers have spent the past decade monopolizing the Majors with a businesslike attitude. Stoic and forceful, less emotion, and more determination than their counterparts, they looked lackadaisical and lost in Game 2, like the drowsy sleeper who keeps hitting snooze on their alarm clock. 

It took five innings for the Dodgers to finally awaken from their slumber. Max Muncy put the boys in blue on the board with a solo shot in the fifth inning, his 12th career postseason homer, tied for second on the Dodgers all-time list.

Los Angeles cut the lead in half thanks to a pair of walks and some bad defense by the Mets.

Tommy Edman drove in two runs when a ball bounced off the glove of first baseman Pete Alonso, but the rally ended when Enrique Hernández hit into a double-play with the bases loaded two batters later.

Hernández had another opportunity to tie the game with runners on second and third in the bottom of the eighth, but he popped out to shallow right field to end the inning.

The Dodgers were 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position in Game 2 and left a total of ten runners on base in the loss.

“We’re never out of the fight,” said Dodgers’ catcher Will Smith of the missed opportunities.. “We were one big swing away from tying the game or taking the lead. As long as we keep giving ourselves opportunities like that we’re going to be okay.”

The Dodgers better sound the alarm when they head to Citi Field on Wednesday for Game 3, or they will be in danger of falling behind in this series. That’s not something they want to do against the team that had the most ninth inning comebacks in baseball this season. 

Before Game 1 of the series, Muncy said his team needed to keep the fire and intensity that allowed them to win back-to-back elimination games to advance past the powerful Padres. But instead of fire and intensity, it was lethargy and fragility on display in Game 2. 

The Mets had much better at-bats than the Dodgers, saw more pitches, showed more fight, and overall looked like the better team on the diamond. Oh, what a difference a day makes. 

Momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher, and the Dodgers didn’t have one. 

Their starting rotation is in shambles, injured beyond recognition, with only one pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, still standing from the Opening Day rotation, and even he missed nearly three months of the season with a rotator cuff injury. 

Now the Dodgers will turn to the inconsistent, but battle-tested Walker Buehler in Game 3. Coming off his second Tommy John surgery, Buehler was 1-6 with a 5.38 ERA in 16 games this season. He allowed six runs in the second inning against San Diego in Game 3 of the NLDS. Manager Dave Roberts believes in him and is banking on his past history of big game performances. 

“I like Walker on the road,” said Roberts. “I talked to Walker yesterday, and he’s obviously never lacked for confidence, but he’s in a good place physically, and he certainly lives for the big moments. What better way to change the bad taste that you had in the regular season for him to have a dominant postseason, and he’s on a heater right now.”

Whether it’s a heater or a luke-warmer, however it looks, the Dodgers need Buehler to deliver a gem in Game 3. If so, they’re back on-line with Yamamoto going in Game 4 and Flaherty on regular rest in Game 5. 

It’s funny how fast things can change in a playoff series. 24 hours ago, the Dodgers looked unbeatable, now they’ve lost home-field advantage and their pitching staff has been quelled. But tomorrow is another day, and another opportunity to flip the script. The rest of this series is still unwritten.

Game 3 of the best-of-seven NLCS between the Mets and Dodgers is scheduled for 5:08 PM PT on Wednesday, October 16th at Citi Field in Queens, NY. The game will air live on FS1.



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Riverside County sheriff – NBC Los Angeles

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October 14, 2024

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Riverside County sheriff – NBC Los Angeles

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Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said Monday he stands by his comments over the weekend when he said his deputies may have prevented a third assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, though a federal law enforcement source told NBC News there’s no indication that there was an attempt to assassinate the former president.

Deputies arrested 49-year-old Vem Miller of Nevada on state weapons charges a quarter mile from the rally. The arrest in Coachella, California, took place before the former president arrived.

“We do know that he showed up with multiple IDs, an unlicensed, unregistered vehicle with fake plates and weapons and ammunition,” Sheriff Bianco said. “In the end ,we found the person with all those monstrous red flags and we were able to arrest him on weapons charges and get him away from the facility before the president got there.”

Bianco’s comments come one day after his weekend press conference where he said he believed another assassination attempt on Trump had been prevented. 

But on Monday we also heard from Miller, who is now out of jail after posting bond.

“I am releasing this statement because of the false information that is currently being released,” Miller said in a video shared on Rumble.

In the video, Miller shared that he’s a longtime supporter of former President Trump.

“Since 2000, I’ve been involved in the Republican Party in Nevada,” Miller said. “I am a Trump caucus captain, I have collected votes for Donald Trump, and I’m also a Trump team leader.”

NBC News was not able to verify Miller’s claim that he worked as a Trump caucus captain or a Trump team leader and that he was invited to the rally.

He said that he was in Coachella working as a journalist for the America Happens Network and always carries guns with him.

“In the trunk of my car I carry two firearms: One is a glock, one is a shotgun, and these two firearms that I carry for me are simply for protection,” he added.

 Bianco wasn’t backing down.

“If he wants to say he was an innocent victim, then he also has to say how dumb it was to come out to believe that he could do all of those and try to get into that event, with guns,” Bianco said. “I don’t care if he’s a supporter of President Trump.”

“I’m very proud of my deputies and everything that they did there,” Bianco said. “We’re not making up anything that he did, we just caught him.”

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