Second of four parts
Re “Feuer Supports Public Park at VA Over Housing for Homeless Veterans”
For more than a century, every generation of grateful Americans honored our war Veterans by honoring the Deed of 1888. They demanded our U.S. government provide quality housing and care for our disabled, needy Veterans.
Obviously this is a mere token of indebtedness owed to our Veterans compared to the many freedoms we enjoy at the enormous expense of their selfless sacrifices.
At War with Our Veterans
After the Vietnam War, the VA began medicating our mentally disabled Veterans with mood altering drugs. The purpose was to treat so-called “invisible” injuries. Then they left them on their own instead of providing supportive housing with oversight care.
Many became addicted to the VA drugs, further incapacitating them, leading to a siege of homelessness.
Today, 47 percent of all homeless Veterans are from the Vietnam War that ended 38 years ago. Meanwhile, that same war has raged on internally.
Every day, on national average, 22 Veterans commit suicide, finding their solace in Plato’s prophecy 2,500 years ago:
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Incredulously, the VA abandoned its fiduciary duty to honor the Deed of 1888 and construct new housing to meet this long-term responsibility.
Instead, the VA bureaucrats formed a “partnership” with over-reaching and over-zealous neighboring communities that led to a multitude of secret land deals benefiting non-Veterans at the horrific expense of homeless Veterans.
In a 1988 Los Angeles Times article headlined “Plans to House Homeless on VA Property Dropped,” Sue Young, then president of the Brentwood Homeowners Assn. and founder/executive director of Veterans Park Conservancy, infamously proclaimed: “We know there is a homeless problem out there, but the Veterans Administration property is not the place to solve it.”
A century after this land was patriotically deeded as a National Veterans Home, Ms. Young and her elitist homeowner group led the charge to block housing for Veterans. This dumped tens of thousands Veterans into homelessness.
Over the past decade, the protracted Iraqi and Afghanistan wars caused devastating casualties that generated lifetime injuries for hundreds of thousands of our military Veterans while the VA partnered with VPC to build a public community park instead of constructing a new Veterans Home.
In November 2007, during the peak of the Middle East Wars, the local Brentwood News asked Ms. Young about the process of getting approval for the public community park.
She boasted: “Because this arrangement was unprecedented, it required lengthy discussions and compromises with Veterans Administration in Los Angeles and Washington. The agreement also called for approvals at the highest levels, i.e., Secretary Nicholson, and the involvement of the Congressional delegation, all of which took time.”
The way Veterans’ property was misappropriated behind closed doors in Washington D.C. by this group of wealthy private citizens reinforces the judicious observation of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter (1939-1962): “The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
For more than a quarter century, Ms. Young and her cabal have been at war with homeless Veterans. They use their wealth and power to influence the VA and the Congressional delegation for their own benefit.
Did I mention City Attorney candidate Michael Feuer supports Ms. Young’s self-serving homeowner group to build a public community park instead of constructing new and modern housing for our homeless Veterans?
(To be continued)
Mr. Rosebrock may be contacted at RRosebrock1@aol.com