Five months after promising up to 800 units of new temporary housing on its West Los Angeles campus by this fall, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is calling for bids to build fewer than a third of that number with a delivery date seven months later.
A request for proposals issued last month by the VA calls for a minimum of 220 units with an option for 40 more. A contract to be awarded at the end of August would require completion by next April.
The solicitation marks a retreat in quantity but an upgrade in quality. After the VA unveiled a plan during a federal court hearing in January to install 800 tiny homes on the campus, advocates for veteran housing criticized the 8-foot-by-8-foot sheds as cramped, flimsy and undignified. The new proposal is for much larger structures of 160 to 226 square feet, each with a bathroom and kitchenette containing a refrigerator, microwave and sink.
Bidding is limited to firms owned by disabled veterans. The notice did not specify a cost. The winner will be chosen based on value, balancing price and technical quality, it said.
The project is the first concrete step in President Trump’s May 2025 executive order to create a National Center for Warrior Independence in West Los Angeles, but still leaves in doubt how accommodations for 6,000 veterans can be completed by Jan. 1, 2028, as required by the order.
In a press release announcing the project, VA Secretary Doug Collins said the Trump administration is restoring the true focus of the West L.A. VA Medical Center that was lost decades ago when the historical home for disabled veterans was closed.
“Step by step, we are moving toward the president’s vision of a campus that provides housing, treatment and training for thousands of formerly homeless Veterans, offering crucial support on their journey back to self-sufficiency,” Collins said.
The new units, and a separate building for intake and services, are to be built on a five-acre, tree-studded field commonly known as the Great Lawn at the intersection of Wilshire and San Vicente boulevards. The development would be adjacent to 135 tiny homes installed in phases beginning during the COVID pandemic to take in veterans who had camped on San Vicente.
The VA has appealed a federal court order requiring it to provide about 2,500 new units of temporary and permanent housing on the campus. But the agency said in a January status report that it intends to move ahead with housing regardless.
“Regardless of this court’s injunction, as a policy matter VA plans to construct temporary supportive housing on the grounds in quantities consistent with what this court ordered at trial,” it said, noting that would constitute 750 to 800 temporary housing units by the end of September.
In response to The Times’ questions, VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said the scope of the executive order has not been reduced.
“VA is in the process of fully implementing the NCWI executive order, which goes far beyond the scope of the court order and requires construction of thousands of additional housing units on campus,” Slaven said in an email.
Slaven said the VA “is building up crucial infrastructure required to handle an increased veteran population.” It has made specialized homeless care teamsavailable to all veterans on the campus, provided case management to help veterans obtain housing subsidies and increased safety measures, the email said, but provided no further detail.
The VA’s 2027 budget proposal sought $500 million for eight projects, including a parking structure and rehabilitation of six existing buildings, but no funds for new housing.
In announcing its initial tiny home plan in January, the VA said funds would come from a 2025 appropriation but did not specify the amount.
Veterans and their advocates generally welcomed the announced new housing but also expressed skepticism about an initiative that has been planned in secret with no opportunity for review by its beneficiaries. (Everyone involved in its planning is required to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and the action plan drafted last September was not publicly released until the eve of a congressional hearing on Trump’s order.)
Rob Reynolds, an Iraq war veteran who advocates for other veterans seeking housing and services on the campus, said he’s heard positive reactions to the upgrade from the tiny homes and to the welcome center where residents could meet with doctors and clinicians.
But he said veterans had questions about the proximity to the tiny home village: “Are these units going to replace those old tiny homes, or is the plan to have two separate programs? Will I get stuck in a smaller unit when someone else gets a larger one?”
They also wanted to know if there would be an area for sober living, he said. The tiny homes follow a “harm reduction” model that does not require sobriety.
“I think the harm reduction model helps us get a lot more people off the street, but veterans who want to be sober should have a place where they can stay sober,” Reynolds said.
It’s also not clear how the initiative will blend with a 15-year-old legal battle over the future of the 388-acre campus that was donated to the U.S. government in the 19th century as a home for disabled soldiers. Quarters that once housed thousands of veterans were closed in the 1970s as the VA mission shifted toward medical care after World War II.
Veterans twice sued in federal court demanding that the VA restore housing on the campus.
In the latest case, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter ordered the VA to build 2,500 units in addition to the 1,200 the agency agreed to build to settle the earlier case.
Though the VA plan would be consistent in scope with the order, concentrating the units in one spot would not. During a series of hearings, witnesses called as development experts pored over maps of the campus to identify several parcels to spread the housing into separate villages.
Jonathan Sherin, the former director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health who testified as an expert in the case, said the concentration of all the units next to the existing tiny homes risked creating a “shanty.”
While praising the VA for reserving the contract for businesses owned by disabled veterans, Sherin said the plan lacks the ingredient he views as most important.
“They need to have places to socialize properly,” he said.
The way to do that is to first build the core of a community and then put housing around it.
“I don’t really see that,” Sherin said. “Where’s the coffee shop? Where’s the place for veterans to hang out? … Where is the market? Where are the jobs?”
Anthony Allman, executive director of the nonprofit Vets Advocacy, created to monitor the earlier lawsuit, said he sees value in concentrating the units to facilitate services but said he’s not sure the VA has the capacity to provide those services even for the veteran housing already there.
“Everyone’s hyper focused on the number of units,” Allman said. “I think we’re missing the more important question: What is our ability to provide support? Do we have the human capital in place? I don’t have the answer.”
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