LOS ANGELES – The Department of Veterans Affairs has submitted a long-delayed report to Congress acknowledging deep problems with major land-use agreements on the West Los Angeles VA campus, including leases with Brentwood School, UCLA, and the Barrington parking lots.
The report, mandated under the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016, lands as the Ninth Circuit considers the future of three leases that a federal judge struck down last year for failing to principally benefit veterans. Those rulings ordered the VA to move faster on building housing on land originally deeded in 1888 for the explicit purpose of caring for disabled veterans.
According to the newly filed report, the VA cannot verify millions of dollars in “in-kind” benefits claimed by Brentwood School and UCLA. The agency also disclosed, for the first time, that the land occupied by those entities, along with the SafetyPark parking lots, could command a combined market rental value of roughly $48 million per year. The VA collected just over $1.7 million in total lease revenue during the reporting year.