UCLA, the private Brentwood School and a parking company are collectively paying only about $2.3 million annually to lease land with a market value of more than $48 million on the Department of Veterans Affairs West Los Angeles campus, the Trump administration concluded in a new report.
The report, filed with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, indicates a shift in the VA’s opposition to portions of a federal judge’s ruling last year that nullified those leases and ordered about 2,500 units of temporary and permanent housing to be built on the 388-acre campus.
The VA appealed the judgment, but, after holding a hearing in April, the appeals court has yet to issue a ruling. In May, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the VA to provide housing for 6,000 people on the campus, a dramatic escalation of the district court’s order.
In a cover letter to the appeals court, Department of Justice attorney Daniel Winik did not suggest the VA was dropping the appeal, but described the report as an update, “informed by the executive order.”
Trump’s order, though asserting that the VA was leasing property “to a private school, private companies, and the baseball team of the University of California, Los Angeles, sometimes at significantly below-market prices,” did not specifically address whether the leases violated the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016 that governs the use of the VA land.