President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the Department of Veterans Affairs to create a center for homeless veterans on its West Los Angeles campus.
The order set a goal of housing up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the center and ordered federal agencies to “ensure that funds that may have been spent on housing or other services for illegal aliens are redirected to construct, establish, and maintain” it.
Trump ordered VA Secretary Doug Collins to prepare an action plan to create the housing by Jan. 1, 2028. He also ordered Collins to report within 60 days on “options like expanding office hours, offering weekend appointments, and increasing the use of virtual healthcare.”
“Too many veterans are homeless in America,” the order said. “Each veteran deserves our gratitude. Yet the Federal Government has not always treated veterans like the heroes they are.”
In the executive order, Trump criticized the Biden administration, accusing it of “shamefully, failing veterans when they needed help most and betraying the taxpayers who rightfully expect better.”
The order comes at a critical moment in a trail of litigation over the VA’s management of the campus. A decision is expected any day from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a federal judge’s ruling that the VA had failed a fiduciary duty to provide housing for veterans. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ordered the VA to immediately create about 100 units of temporary housing on the 388-acre campus and to build more than 2,000 units of permanent and temporary housing. He also invalidated leases of portions of that land to civilian entities including UCLA and a private school.
The VA appealed the decision, contending, in addition to other legal arguments, that the cost would irreparably harm other services to veterans.
Although the immediate effect on the case was unclear, veterans took Trump’s executive order as a positive sign.
“A lot of the veterans I’ve spoken to so far are very happy to see that the White House has taken this position about the West Los Angeles VA,” said Rob Reynolds, an Iraq war veteran who testified in the case about his frustrations helping homeless veterans seeking housing on the campus. “Just to know that there was an executive order signed for more housing on VA land, that’s a huge win for us. That’s something vets have been fighting for for years.”
The Veterans Collective, a development and service partnership that has a VA contract to construct about 1,200 units of supportive housing on the campus, issued a statement saying that it “enthusiastically applauds President Trump’s plan for a national center for homeless veterans” and said it looks forward to welcoming him to the campus soon.
The group is working to complete the 1,200 units by the end of Trump’s term, it said.
“With more than 1,000 Veterans already living on campus today, it would be a wonderful opportunity for them to meet with the Commander-in-Chief,” the statement said. “He would also be the first President to see our progress.”
Another veteran who has been critical of the VA’s handling of the campus development was more guarded.
“The President’s Executive Order is a right thing but not yet the right thing,” said Anthony Allman, executive of Vets Advocacy, a nonprofit created to monitor development of a master plan that arose from an earlier lawsuit.
Allman notes that the order outlines a plan for more than just housing and envisions a center of activity and services for veterans on and off the campus.
“We look forward to working with the administration to make the right things — housing, community, workforce development — available to veterans at the historic Pacific Branch property,” Allman said, using the historic name for the disabled soldiers home created there in the 19th century.
In a lengthy preamble, Trump’s executive order alluded to some of that history, including the closing of veterans’ housing in the 1970s and improper leases of veterans’ land that led to the two lawsuits.
“The campus once featured a chapel, billiard hall, 1,000-seat theater, and housed about 6,000 veterans, but the Federal Government has since allowed this crown jewel of veteran care to deteriorate over the last few decades,” it said. “The Department of Veterans Affairs leased parts of the property to a private school, private companies, and the baseball team of the University of California, Los Angeles, sometimes at significantly below-market prices.
“As of 2024, there were approximately 3,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles, more than in any other city in the country and accounting for about 10 percent of all of America’s homeless veterans. Many of these heroes live in squalor in Los Angeles’s infamous ‘Skid Row.’”
Trump called for more accountability, ordering Collins to reverse what it described as the Biden administration’s decision to “rehire and reinstate back pay for employees previously fired for misconduct” and to “take appropriate action against individuals who have committed misconduct.”
The order also required an action plan to expand the Manchester VA Medical Center in New Hampshire to a full-service medical center “so that it is no longer the only State in the contiguous United States” without one.
