By Melody Hanatani
Daily Press Staff Writer

WEST LOS ANGELES Three years of cries and demands from local and federal officials to find space on the West LA Veterans Affairs campus to house homeless services has finally netted results.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson announced Tuesday that three vacant buildings on the sprawling West LA campus would be designated to strictly serve the county’s 15,000 homeless veteran population, which could include medical services and housing.

The announcement late Tuesday was skimpy on the details, instead focusing more on other changes in store for the West LA center, including a regional office and a place to store ashes of the dead. The secretary also announced that the conclusion of a site review process to upgrade health care facilities at the VA will be presented next month.

The people who advocated for years for the designation of the three buildings are celebrating this week, recalling the day three years when they first brought it to the secretary’s attention that the empty facilities needed to be used for homeless veteran services.

“I’m elated,” said Bobby Shriver, who in the beginning of his first term three years ago as a Santa Monica City Councilmember, lobbied everyone from local VA administrators to his own brother-in-law, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to persuade the veteran affairs secretary.

The designation has also been supported in the past by Congressman Henry Waxman, Congresswoman Jane Harman and LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

Those who have worked on the campaign from the beginning say they had given up hope that the designation would ever happen.

“(I’ve) been beating my head against the wall for three years,” said Jean Sedillos, who volunteered for Shriver’s election campaign in 2004 and continues to assist him in his councilmember duties. “It’s been a long time.”

The three buildings, which are located in the northern part of the campus, were originally constructed for mental patients and had been sitting dormant for 25 years, Shriver said.

“They were suited for looking after the people with mental difficulties, which a lot of homeless people have,” he said on Tuesday. “With the number of homeless veterans in LA, and looking at the empty buildings built for veterans with mental disabilities, it was absolutely outrageous they hadn’t been used in 25 years.”

The announcement essentially takes the three buildings out of the Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services study, a system-wide assessment to shape VA campuses for the future needs of veterans.

The study looks at empty buildings and the consolidation of services.

The clinical staff at the West LA VA will now develop a request for proposals to seek a social service provider to run the homeless service programs.

“These buildings are now exclusively for the use of homeless veterans, period,” Shriver said. “Nothing else can go up there, even other veterans’ uses can’t go out.”

melodyh@smdp.com