John Plahovinsak
On May 9, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order, which would establish a center for homeless veterans entitled the National Center for Warrior Independence in Los Angeles, California. The Center will be located on property previously acquired by a donation in 1887.
In two (2) of the Opinion/Editorial (OPED) articles published in the September 19, 2024 and December 18, 2024 issues of The Clermont Sun newspaper, I recommended that President Donald Trump address this situation as his first priority.
Although President Trump did not address this as his first action, he did address it now in his Executive Order of May 9, 2025. My second request was that he should appoint Judge David Carter, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, to be placed in charge of the West Los Angeles VA Administration.
The signed Executive Order states: “As of 2024, there were approximately 3,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles, more than in any other city in the country and accounting for about 10 percent of all of America’s homeless veterans. Many of these heroes live in squalor in Los Angeles’s infamous ‘skid row.’”
The Order places the blame on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center for the failure to house the 3,000 homeless veterans.
The West Los Angeles VA Medical Center “leased parts of the (donated) property to a private school, private companies, and the baseball team of the University of California, Los Angeles, sometimes at significantly below-market prices.”
The Order requires the VA Secretary to “take all appropriate action to designate a National Center for Warrior Independence on the West Los Angeles VA Campus.”
This campus will house “homeless veterans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and around the Nation (where they) can seek and receive the care, benefits, and services to which they are entitled.”
The VA Secretary is required “to work with other municipalities and VA facilities to ensure that homeless veterans outside the Los Angeles metropolitan area who want to avail themselves of the National Center for Warrior Independence are provided the means to do so.”
The VA Secretary must “work to restore self-sufficiency and the warrior ethos among homeless veterans through any guidance, requirements, or services needed to ensure that homeless veterans can access housing, receive substance abuse or addiction treatment, and return to productive work and community engagement.”
To pay for the construction, the Secretary of Health and Human Services “must coordinate with other relevant department or agencies to ensure that funds that may have been spent on housing or other services for illegal aliens are redirected to construct, establish, and maintain this National Center for Warrior Independence.”
The VA Secretary must “within 120 days of the date of this order, present an action plan to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, to meet these directives and restore the capacity to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the National Center for Warrior Independence by January 1, 2028.”
President Trump stated (in the Executive Order): “Our Nation’s security, prosperity, and freedom would not be possible without our veterans. Many service members paid the ultimate sacrifice. Many others bear visible and invisible wounds from their service. Too many veterans are homeless in America. Each veteran deserves our gratitude.”
“A lot of the veterans I’ve spoken to so far are very happy to see that the White House has taken this position about the West Los Angeles VA,” said Rob Reynolds, an Iraq war veteran who testified in the case about his frustrations helping homeless veterans seeking housing on the campus.
“Just to know that there was an Executive Order signed for more housing on VA land, that’s a huge win for us. That’s something vets have been fighting for, for years,” concluded Reynolds.
Who is Judge David Carter and why should he have a leadership position in the developing of the National Center for Warrior Independence?
Judge Carter is a U.S. District Judge who decided a case and ordered the West Los Angeles VA to immediately create about 100 units of temporary housing on the 388-acre campus and to build more than 2,000 units of permanent and temporary housing in the immediate future.
He also invalidated leases of portions of that land to civilian companies, including UCLA and an expensive private school.
Work had already started to construct the first 100 units of modular temporary housing that Judge Carter ordered in November of 2024, when the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (VA) requested a “stay” appeal (stop-work order) and halted all construction.
The VA, in its “stay” appeal, contended “that the (construction) cost (of the temporary housing) would irreparably harm other services to veterans.”
As of May 12, 2025, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has yet to decide on a federal judge’s ruling that “the VA had failed a fiduciary duty to provide housing for veterans.”
My Opinion: First, VA Secretary Doug Collins should recommend/suggest to the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs (VA) to drop their appeal of Judge David Carter’s decision. Second, they should expedite the construction of the first 100 units of modular temporary housing before the next winter.
Third, Judge Carter, himself a Vietnam War veteran, has proven to be a fighter for veterans’ rights and their housing. Most importantly, he has the qualities of “passion” and “fire in his heart” for veterans.
He, if he desires to accept the responsibly, should be given a leadership position to develop the National Center for Warrior Independence. I firmly believe he can get the job done.
BioSketch: John Plahovinsak is a retired 32-year Army veteran who served from 1967 to 1999. He is the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Department of Ohio’s Hospital Chairman and Adjutant of DAV Chapter #63 (Clermont County). He can be reached at: [email protected].
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