At one point, the Trump administration imagined a lofty future for the 97-year-old derelict building on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ sprawling campus in West Los Angeles.
In a November notice to contractors, the VA described the renovation of the vacant Art Deco structure as a “seed” project for Trump’s executive order to create a National Center for Warrior Independence. It would be “reimagined as a vibrant, service-oriented space that honors its historical significance” and “provides meeting spaces and food options to the entire Los Angeles Veteran community to gather.”
A bid offering was never put out, however, and now construction is underway instead on what housing experts say is likely the costliest affordable housing that California’s notoriously expensive tax credit financing system has yet produced. Using tax-free bond financing, a developer is revamping the upper floor of the two-story building into 24 housing units estimated to cost $1.25 million each.
The project’s estimated $52-million cost includes $22 million in VA funds identified as “commercial cost” for development of the ground floor. The developer, a partnership called The Veterans Collective, has not released plans for the commercial portion of the building or identified specific tenants.
In an email responding to questions from The Times, the VA said the main floor will “house key Veteran services, including food and grocery options, a peer center and spaces for Veterans to gather and socialize” and that the VA will retain control and responsibility for the space.
The building, formally Building 13, is at the center of a long-running dispute over the character of development that is remaking the 388-acre campus.
A 2016 draft master plan earmarks the building as a veteran multipurpose union with a cafeteria as an alternate use. The final plan adopted in 2022 added details such as meeting facilities, a fitness center, canteen, Patriot Store and other “community-serving activities.” It also added housing.
Veterans groups and advocates who shaped the 2016 draft plan contend the housing was tacked on to allow the VA to avoid the cost of rehabilitating the building. Instead, it is leasing it to the private developer, which is using low-income housing tax credits and private financing to build hundreds of housing units for homeless veterans on the property.
The November notice from the Trump administration buoyed their hopes that the VA would develop the building as the central element of the master plan’s Town Center that would be distinct from 1,200 units of new housing for homeless and disabled veterans on the campus.
Those hopes faded in April when the VA issued a budget that provided nothing for a town center. Then scaffolding went up around the building almost immediately after state tax credits were issued in May.
“I was stunned to see those numbers; it must be one of the most unaffordable projects ever undertaken,” said Bobby Shriver, the former Santa Monica mayor who conducted dozens of veteran focus groups for a 2016 master plan.
“I’m frustrated there is nobody building the art gallery, the music room, the barber shop, the bowling alley or the hotel,” Shriver said.
“What a shame that we have to spend that much money on housing,” said Jonathan Sherin, former director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, who played a key role in integrating what he calls “community tissue” into the draft master plan. Creating housing on top of storefronts “is presumably because it’s the only way to get money.”
Sherin argues that gathering places like coffee shops, barber shops and structured activities like job training are as critical as housing for veteran well-being.
“We want to honor the needs of veterans by creating a community, by creating a town center that is not just a storefront, that is a center of gravity for the neighborhoods around that campus and veterans who don’t live on the campus to thrive,” Sherin said.
In its statement, the VA said that because it “will retain custody and control over the service space on the main floor, any Veteran (resident or non-resident) will be able to access those services.”
It said the Center for Warrior Independence involves “creating both housing and services for veterans living on campus” and acknowledged that it determined that “using enhanced use lease authority to provide both housing and services for Veterans would enable a developer to cover much of the cost for the renovation of building 13 and lead to faster results for Veterans compared to designing and building new infrastructure.”
The Veterans Collective, a partnership of the nonprofit U.S. VETS and the low-income housing developers Century Housing and Thomas Safran & Associates, declined to answer questions about the project and instead issued a statement attributed to its community director, Tess Banko.
“We remain laser focused on our partnership with VA to deliver the housing, services, and community our veterans deserve, in the Town Center and across the neighborhood,“ it said.
Tension over development of the campus has dragged on for more than a decade in two federal court cases and more recently Trump’s executive order.
The campus was donated to the U.S. government in the late 19th century as a permanent home for disabled soldiers of foreign wars and at times housed up to 4,000 veterans. World War II brought changes as the VA shifted its mission from housing to medical care. The last soldiers’ home closed in the 1970s. The VA leased portions of the campus to outside interests including UCLA and the Brentwood School for athletic facilities.
A 2011 lawsuit challenging those leases led to another shift. A judge found the leases illegal, and the VA reached a settlement committing to draw up a master plan for 1,200 units for homeless veterans.
Instead of funding a building program, the VA issued 99-year leases to a series of developers that relied on the tax-credit financing commonly used to build low-income housing. As the principal developer, The Vets Collective has refurbished several buildings and has plans to build others.
The need for upgrades to campus infrastructure and the slow process of obtaining tax credits left the building program years behind schedule, precipitating a 2022 lawsuit. In 2024, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter ordered the VA to build about 2,500 units of temporary and permanent housing in addition to the 1,200 required in the earlier lawsuit. Later, Carter ordered the VA to immediately install about 100 modular units.
The VA appealed the ruling. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to render a final decision.
Trump’s 2025 executive order added a new layer, calling for construction of housing for up to 6,000 veterans who would come from around the nation.
Scarcity of vacant land on the campus for all that housing has added to the diversity of opinion on Building 13. Randy Johnson, a developer called as an expert witness in the second lawsuit, advised Carter that many historic buildings on campus are not worth saving.
“You’re talking about a million two-fifty each for 24 units?” Johnson said when told of the renovation plan. “Take the ball to Building 13 and put up a new structure,” he said. “You would have got 100 units.”
Anthony Allman, executive director of Vets Advocacy, a nonprofit created to monitor the settlement of the earlier lawsuit, said a neutral process is needed to find out what veterans want.
“It shouldn’t be what an individual wants,” Allman said. “It should be what the collective veteran community wants.”
But he said he wouldn’t trust the VA to conduct that process because of its failure to disclose that many veterans answering a survey expressed interest in a hotel.
Shriver, who has advocated to make Building 13 a hotel, said he is disappointed Trump has not gotten personally involved.
“I wish he would turn his developer expertise to the property,” he said. “I thought he would look at this and say, ‘I know how to fix that,’ and do it. But he hasn’t done that yet.”
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