Land Meant to House Homeless Veterans Is Being Leased for Profit by Universities, exposing How Greed Deepens the Homelessness Crisis.
Several learning institutions, including UCLA, stand accused of stealing land that was allocated for the use of homeless veterans. Allegedly, they leased this land directly from the Department of Veteran Affairs. However, it was supposed to be used to house homeless veterans.
As the saga of land theft that initially made headway in 2019 now reaches its peak, find out how US colleges are once again tied into the trauma of homelessness and human suffering and learn what you can do as an advocate to help fight back.
VA Land Theft: How Operating ‘Above the Law’ Perpetuates Homelessness
To understand the current state of veteran homelessness, it’s important to know the role the VA played in swiping land that was initially set aside to house local unsheltered veterans. The picture of Veteran’s Row certainly isn’t pretty. Indeed, it is an extension of ongoing wars abroad. Here, former soldiers reside in tattered tents bedazzled in American flags, trash piling up around them like broken promises.
It is not enough that post-2001 militia members face a litany of previously unseen obstacles. These include widespread poverty and unemployment coupled with extremely high rates of disabilities and increased rates of homeless criminalization that target unsheltered homeless people specifically, a subpopulation that disproportionately consists of US vets. In addition to these surface-layer hindrances, something sits as deep as the soil itself, in the words of a broken treaty that’s more than 130 years old.
Imagine this: tens of thousands of US veterans sleep rough on the streets of America while hundreds of acres of land that belong to them get leased out by the VA to other corporations. As outlandish as it sounds, in a landmark court hearing in 2019, through a 124-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David Carter found that was precisely the case.
In reaction to the transgressions made, Judge Carter moved that the VA void all leases on property intended to be a “National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers” as per an 1888 agreement between the United States and its fighters. Among those leases were the following well-known points of interest:
- The parking lots of Safety Park
- Brentwood School’s “Core Area” which consists of a private athletic center complete with a swimming pool
- The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)’s Jackie Robinson baseball stadium and practice field
- As well as multi-million-dollar earning oil facilities belonging to Bridgeland Resources LLC
5 Years Later, UCLA and the Brentwood School Continue to Swindle Homeless Veterans Out of Land
The initial ruling doled out by Judge Carter in 2019 continues to be contested by these learning institutions that were recipients of the illegitimate land leases. In early autumn of this year, a federal judge moved to close the infamous Jackie Robinson baseball stadium because the VA violated homeless veterans’ constitutional rights by leasing out and profiting tremendously from their land.
According to the Daily Journal, tenants to these illegal leases (namely the Brentwood School and UCLA) were not legally included in the case but have chosen to speak out against the ruling that would close several integral spaces.
In one incredulous statement, Brentwood School’s founding partner, Louis R. Miller (Skip), said, “Without that core area, our students have nowhere to exercise.”
Imagine a corporation so full of privilege and pride that it would openly value student exercises over former soldiers having a safe place to live. Representatives from UCLA made comparable statements before the judge in injunctive relief hearings, offering to repurpose their facilities and fields instead of dismantling them.
This case has been ongoing for at least the past five years. Meanwhile, the average homeless veteran will remain living outside on the streets for approximately six years, being physically, mentally, and emotionally at war that entire time.
“In my line of work, it’s not at all uncommon to witness a homeless veteran wait years to receive benefits of any kind. The process is unnervingly slow, and many former soldiers simply opt out completely and return to the streets to live unsheltered,” explained Philadelphia-based crisis supervisor Bruce Lockett in an exclusive interview with Invisible People. “It’s disheartening to watch them be failed by the system again and again.”
It’s Time to Think About ‘Education’ and Its Role in Perpetuating Homelessness
College campuses are always cast before the public as beacons of hope for the future, but the truth is far more complicated. Crippling student loan debt has given way to uncertainty, and a wave of homelessness and housing instability has already hit would-be Gen Z scholars who cannot make ends meet after graduation.
One of the top three leading causes of homelessness is poverty. The skyrocketing price of higher education has contributed to deepening poverty both for young people who choose to attend universities and cannot afford to pay back their loans and young people who opt not to attend universities and are then forced to compete with college grads for low-paying employment opportunities.
Additionally, universities such as UCLA have now taken to evicting campus residents for protesting genocide despite them having the legal right to do so. These corporations have pushed to steal from homeless veterans while robbing protestors of war of their degrees at the same time, creating a lose-lose scenario for everyone except themselves. This says a great deal about who they are really at war with.
It’s time to hold these corporate figureheads accountable for hanging higher education over the heads of upcoming generations, dangling knowledge like some unattainable carrot before them, and doing so on land they stole from soldiers who fought for this country.
Talk to Your Representatives About Standing Up for Unsheltered Soldiers Through Better Policies
We cannot combat homelessness while encouraging corporate greed. Please talk to your local legislators about drafting and enforcing policies that return land to the veterans who’ve earned it through their service and often paid for it with their bodies and minds today.
