BREAKING: VA terminates Brentwood School lease on the West LA VA campus
In an effort to house more homeless vets, the government says it is ending a controversial, decades-long relationship with one of the country's most exclusive private schools.
The swimming pool located at the Brentwood School athletic facilities in the early morning on Wed., Aug. 21, 2024, in Los Angeles, Calif. Photo by Morgan Lieberman/Long Lead
In a press release published Monday, February 9, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the termination of several leases on its West LA VA campus, most notably ending its agreement with the Brentwood School, a private K-12 academy that’s reared the offspring of some of the city’s most powerful figures.
The VA also terminated the department’s lease with Safety Park, which had operated a parking lot on the campus that served shoppers in the Brentwood neighborhood, and its agreement with Bridgeland Resources, which conducted oil drilling operations on the 388-acre VA campus.
“These groups have been fleecing taxpayers and Veterans for far too long, and under President Trump, VA is taking decisive action to ensure the West LA VAMC campus is used only as intended: to benefit Veterans,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in the after-hours press release.
“The VA has offered to meet in Washington,” Brentwood School said in a request for comment. “We look forward to that meeting with hopes of preserving our longstanding relationship and the extensive services Brentwood School provides that so many Veterans value.”
The Home of the Brave newsletter reports on how veterans are fighting homelessness through Powers v. McDonough, a class-action lawsuit filed against the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Though the appeal is over, their struggle for housing is not. Get updates delivered to your inbox here:
The announcement to cancel the leases is an about-face for the VA, which for decades had not only leased parts of its expansive West LA campus to third parties, but also saw laws changed so it could be legally possible to do so.
The West LA Leasing Act — which was co-authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Ted Lieu and signed into law by President Obama — allowed the VA to contract with third-party organizations to manage its properties on leases that could last up to 99 years. As a result, the government entangled itself in a wild array of leases on the valuable LA land — from soccer pitches to parrot sanctuaries — and became unable to solve a homeless crisis of its own creation. (For more on the leases, read “Carving up the Map,” Part Four of Home of the Brave.)
The Brentwood School lease with the VA was for 22 acres on the property’s northwestern tip. Between 1998 and 2012, the school spent an estimated $17 million to build athletic facilities on the grounds. Featuring a heated, 10-lane swimming pool with a 5,100-square-foot adjoining support building, a weight room, tennis courts, baseball and softball fields, a soccer and football stadium and an outdoor track, the Veterans Center for Recreation and Education (VCRE), as it was later named by the school, was supposed to be shared between the school and veterans.
At trial, Judge Carter found the facility’s availability for veteran use to be woefully insufficient. The judge, a former marine, agreed with two different VA Office of Inspector General reports that said the school’s lease was invalid because it didn’t principally benefit veterans, a term of the WLA Leasing Act. That was also a position of one of the VA’s own staffers, who stated it on the stand at trial.
After Carter issued his ruling, the judge required Brentwood School and the veteran plaintiffs to come to an agreement to use the property jointly. A $5 million preliminary settlement resulted, requiring the school to open its gym, pool, and weight room to vets more than 50 percent of the time, in addition to other in-kind services the school provided veterans, such as food and clothing drives, scholarships, and transportation. But further progress on that agreement stalled when the VA appealed Carter’s ruling and the case moved to the Ninth Circuit.
In related news, the Los Angeles Times reports today that the city of Los Angeles is attempting to remove Carter from another case involving homelessness over what they called a “parade of irregular proceedings and rulings.”
Brentwood School’s history dates back to 1902, first as the Urban Military Academy across multiple locations and then as the Brentwood Military Academy when it settled in the neighborhood next to the West LA VA campus. The co-ed day school is now one of America’s most expensive private academies, though it now has little to do with preparing students for military service. Its notable alumni includes actor Patrick Schwarzenegger, musician Adam Levine, journalist Andrew Breitbart, and agent Casey Wasserman.
As Home of the Brave reported previously, Brentwood School dropped nearly $1 million on a white-shoe Washington firm to lobby their interests on Capitol Hill. Subsequently, a bill floated by an Oregon U.S. House member included an amendment for Brentwood that mirrored UCLA’s deal to secure land on the West LA VA campus. At trial, the plaintiff’s counsel focussed on this detail in a particularly heated exchange with the school’s assistant head.
When reached for comment for “The Land War,” Part Three of Home of the Brave.) a representative for the Brentwood School noted that the school has partnered with the VA dating back to 1972, adding the relationship “has always been a mutually beneficial collaboration.”
Coincidentally, 1972 is the year when thousands of veterans were evicted from the West LA VA campus. The year prior, a 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck LA and decimated VA hospitals in Sepulveda and San Fernando. At least 46 of the more than 60 people who perished in that disaster were veterans. Assessments taken after the quake showed that none of the VA’s California facilities had been built to withstand such a massive blast. As a result, Washington shuttered the housing at the West LA VA.
Another reason for the closure was that the campus had been chronically underfunded and a point of vicious fights between President Nixon and one of his chief agitators, Sen. Alan Cranston. The earthquake served as a tool of political expedience, allowing the federal government to get out of the veteran housing game for good, or so it hoped. But since that time, every administration has shared responsibility in propagating LA’s homeless veterans crisis by leasing the property out instead of housing retired service members on it.
A 50-year battle for housing
Press and onlookers gather around a collapsed, hunger-striking Vietnam veteran at a VA protest in 1981. William Warren / Alamy Stock Photo
At its peak in the late 1950s, the West LA VA campus housed around 5,000 veterans. Then, after a deadly 1971 earthquake and a flood of broken promises, the government ordered veterans living on the campus to vacate within a month. For the past 50 years, Los Angeles veterans have been fighting their own government in a battle for housing that’s still raging today. Learn more by reading Part Three of Home of the Brave: “The Land War.”
Today’s statement from the VA announcing the leases’ terminations notes the move will “help clear [a] path for construction of the National Center for Warrior Independence for homeless Veterans.”
On May 9, 2025 President Trump signed an executive order to establish a National Center for Warrior Independence (NCWI) at the West LA VA, a program with a goal to house 6,000 veterans on the property by 2028. The executive order also required that the president be given an action plan for development of the property within 120 days, which was September 6. In the fall, when asked if the president had received the action plan on or ahead of the order’s deadline, VA spokesperson Pete Kasperowicz said that the “implementation of President Trump’s executive order is on schedule.”
Today’s release by the VA said the department is examining a range of design and construction options for the NCWI, and it will continue to release updates “as final decisions are made on the project.”
But progress has been hard to gage. According to Rep. Mark Takano, a member of House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, the VA has required anyone working on its housing plan at the West LA VA to sign non-disclosure agreements, “so they cannot talk to anyone — including Congress — about what VA is planning.” Rep. Takano also said he requested a list of the people required to sign NDAs, and said that VA had not responded to his request.
The Home of the Brave newsletter will return with updates when they are available, including information on how more housing will be built at the West LA VA, per the Trump administration’s executive order that required an action plan be delivered to the president by September 6, 2025.
So does this mean that Veterans will no longer have access to the facilities Brentwood School made available to them (Gym, swimming pool, track, and baseball field)?
Coincidentally, February 9 is also the anniversary of that 1971 earthquake.
So does this mean that Veterans will no longer have access to the facilities Brentwood School made available to them (Gym, swimming pool, track, and baseball field)?