Military Life Veterans

The Department of Veterans Affairs "has strayed from its mission," the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found, and must build 1,800 permanent and 750 temporary housing units on its West Los Angeles campus.

Updated Dec 27, 2025 2:39 PM EST

Judge David O. Carter tours the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus in August, 2024. Photo by Brian van der Brug for the Los Angeles Times via Getty Images.

The Department of Veterans Affairs must build hundreds of new housing units on its massive West Los Angeles campus, a federal appeals court ruled this week. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 2024 ruling from a federal district court judge, which ordered more than 2,500 permanent and temporary housing units be built on the campus.

A three-judge panel from the appeals court largely agreed with the district court ruling. On Tuesday, after eight months of deliberation, it issued its decision, finding that the VA had “strayed from its mission.”

“There are now scores of unhoused veterans trying to survive in and around the greater Los Angeles area despite the acres of land deeded to the VA for their care. Rather than use the West Los Angeles VA Grounds as President Lincoln intended, the VA has leased the land to third party commercial interests that do little to benefit the veterans,” Circuit Judge Ana de Alba wrote.

This case, Powers v. McDonough, is a class action lawsuit that argued that the lack of housing on the campus left many homeless or disabled veterans from being able to get the care they needed. In September 2024, Judge David O. Carter issued a sweeping ruling, finding that not only was the VA discriminating against disabled veterans by failing to build housing on the West Los Angeles campus, many of the leases of its land to private entities were invalid. The VA, Carter said, “has not made good on its promise to build housing for veterans.” He ordered that the VA immediately start work on those 2,550 supportive units. The VA appealed, but a hearing wasn’t set until this spring. After that hearing in April the case went silent for months until this week’s decision.

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The land was originally deeded to the federal government in 1888 to provide care and housing for veterans. In the early to mid-20th Century, thousands of veterans lived on the campus. However that changed by the 1970s and the campus has largely been focused on healthcare, with a large hospital. The VA also has leased several portions of the campus to schools, including the University of California, Los Angeles, and oil companies. In recent years many homeless encampments, largely full of former service members, formed on the perimeter of the campus. “Veterans Row,” as it was called, was cleared in 2021, after the VA said it would bring some people inside in temporary structures. The VA is currently building 1,200 permanent housing units on the campus as a result of a separate lawsuit that settled in 2015.

The judicial panel also largely upheld Carter’s ruling, including the nullification of many of the private leases. However the Ninth Circuit did reinstate UCLA’s lease. The Department of Veterans Affairs argued that the Veterans Judicial Review Act meant that the district court did not have jurisdiction over the case; the panel found that the plaintiffs were “not collaterally attacking the VA’s individual benefits determinations.”

In May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a transformation of the campus into a “National Center for Warrior Independence.” The directive, issued as the VA was actively fighting Judge Carter’s order for housing, called on the VA to build enough housing units to provide homes for 6,000 veterans by 2028. A full plan has not been released by the VA, missing Trump’s own deadline for the fall; this month the Los Angeles Times reported on notices for the renovation of two buildings on the campus, the first such details to be released.

The 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, a point-in-time count conducted earlier in the year, found that an estimated 3,050 veterans are homeless. That is up by 2% from 2024 but still down 20% from 2023, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and VA.

As a result of the appeals court’s ruling, the case is now back in the hands of Carter to oversee the implementation of his ruling.

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