The Iraq war veteran behind a landmark court ruling for VA housing

Iraq war veteran Rob Reynolds was shocked to find a homeless encampment of fellow veterans just outside the gates of the VA's West Los Angeles campus, where he had sought treatment in 2018 for his war injuries.

"It was the most infuriating thing I'd ever seen," Reynolds recalled in a recent interview.

Determined to make a difference, Reynolds sprang into action. He left his job with CalFire and began advocating for the homeless veterans.

"I started going to townhall meetings at the VA, federal advisory boards that oversee the VA property and just started giving presentations about all the veterans that were sleeping around the property and how there were illegal land use agreements," he said. "I also started taking care of and helping manage all these veterans that were sleeping outside the gates of the VA. I worked really hard to get them all moved off the street."

About a dozen veterans were camped outside the VA's gates when Reynolds first encountered them in 2018, but during the pandemic their numbers swelled. Reynolds estimates that about 200 cycled in and out of the area during that time. He worked with community leaders and others, including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to first get them tents set up inside the gates on VA property and then to erect a development of tiny shelters where 135 still live.

The following year, Reynolds was introduced to Mark Rosenbaum, a longtime civil rights lawyer at Public Counsel. Rosenbaum had already sued the VA once over its misuse of the Los Angeles campus, and he was ready to sue again.

"We started working together to get the veterans signed up and get their stories and get the lawsuit filed," Reynolds recalled.

Rosenbaum said that Reynolds' coordination efforts laid the groundwork for the second lawsuit, ultimately leading to a landmark court ruling that mandates the VA move forward with plans to build housing and additional facilities for veterans at its site.

"If the VA worked half as hard as Rob to get veterans off the streets of Los Angeles and into desperately needed mental and physical health services, veteran homelessness would be an ugly chapter of the past in our government's sordid history of insensitivity to the men and women who sacrificed themselves for the greater good," Rosenbaum said.

"What makes Rob's work especially remarkable is that he suffers 100% service-related disability, PTSD, as consequence of combat experiences during the bloodiest days of the Iraq war. He risked his life countless times to save his wounded and dying brethren and he continues his fight for those here enduring the brutal visible and invisible wounds of war," Rosenbaum said.

The 388-acre West LA VA property was donated in 1888 to be a soldiers' home, and it operated that way for nearly 80 years. At one time, 5,000 veterans lived on the property. In the 1970s, the VA began evicting veterans and leasing the land to private entities ― including UCLA for a baseball field and the private Brentwood School.

The leasing of the property to other entities had long been a sore spot among veterans and their advocates, but it came to a head in recent years as the homeless population in Los Angeles exploded. Even now, there are nearly 3,000 veterans living on the streets, according to a 2024 survey by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. This represents a 22.9% decrease from 2023, when the number stood at 3,878.

Rosenbaum and other civil rights lawyers first sued over the misuse of the campus in 2011. In 2015, the VA entered a settlement that required the agency to develop a new master plan for the campus that prioritized housing for homeless veterans. That settlement also required the VA to stop leasing parts of the land for non-veteran-related purposes and instead dedicate the space to building supportive housing for veterans.

But the VA was slow to implement that plan and homeless veterans languished outside its gates and on streets throughout the region. The second lawsuit, filed in 2022, accused the VA of failing to honor its 2015 settlement agreement to build 1,200 units of supportive housing for veterans on the campus. By the time the lawsuit was filed, only a small fraction of the promised housing had been built.

In September, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in favor of the veterans, ordering the VA to construct 1,800 additional permanent housing units and 750 temporary units on the campus. Carter, a swaggering former Marine, also took the dramatic step of temporarily locking UCLA out of its baseball field.

"The victories we have achieved in the courtroom are not the result of skilled lawyers, though the legal team assembled is exceptional. Rather they are the direct consequence of brave warriors led by Rob whose narratives of their battles in our nation's wars and now against the VA to secure the rights to housing and health care that point to justice and are the least our government can do in return for their service," Rosenbaum said.

Reynolds served in the U.S. Army from 2006 to 2010 and then worked at CalFire, the state's fire department, for six years, where he said answering 911 calls exacerbated the PTSD he developed in Iraq.

When he started this crusade, he was unsure how it would turn out. "One thing I always knew in my mind is that if anybody just took a look at the facts and really took time to understand and learn this situation, there's no way that this ruling from Judge Carter couldn't happen. The facts are so indisputable in this case," he said.

"The goal of all of us is to get this property back to its original intended purpose of being a soldiers' home and get our homeless veterans off the street and stop this madness where we have thousands of veterans sleeping and dying in the streets of Los Angeles. There's no reason they should be," he concluded.