The VA Failed to Disclose Findings of a Survey that Shows Keen Veteran Interest in a Hotel

Officials of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the developer contracted to build housing on the VA's West Los Angeles campus failed to disclose findings from a survey showing that a large majority of veterans expressed interest in having a hotel as part of a town center on the property.

Executives of the development partnership, the West Los Angeles Veterans Collective, have excluded a hotel from their plans and denied in interviews and public meetings that the survey found any veteran interest in a hotel.

"That concept did not come up in any of the outreach we have done to date in our six years on the job," Brian D'Andrea, senior vice president of Century Housing, told The Times in a September interview. "It did not come up in the survey results that we heard from veterans on."

But a tabulation of the survey's responses obtained by The Times shows that 75% of the veterans surveyed expressed strong or moderate interest in a "hotel or hospitality services for veterans and their families." A hotel rated above several other amenities that are included in the plan, such as a library or museum.

After receiving questions from The Times about the survey, which was completed in May, the VA posted it online Tuesday afternoon. The agency did not directly address questions about the hotel, but said in a statement, "This invaluable feedback will be used to inform future planning decisions."

The Veterans Collective said in a statement that the raw data had not been shared with it by the VA and that its executives, who had not previously seen it, "never intentionally tried to mislead or ignore the hotel interest."

It acknowledged that the hotel is an interest among many veterans but added that it did not place in the top half of the choices in the survey.

The statement described the survey as "imperfect," with a tendency to inflate expression of interest because there was no limit to the number of items that could be checked.

The VA had previously released only a summary of the survey, listing ten items that veterans said they wanted. The majority of those are campus-wide services such as security, public transit and case management, not the types of facilities that would make up a town center.

"I'm not surprised the Veterans Collective misrepresented results from the survey," said Anthony Allman, executive director of a nonprofit Vets Advocacy created under a 2015 court settlement to monitor the master plan for the campus development. "They've been misleading the community for years regarding their selection to develop the town center."

Allman is among a faction of veterans who contend that the the developer's contract to build housing does not extend to the town center.

"More importantly, why has VA tolerated this behavior given the history of collusion and illegal land use activity on campus?" he said.

The hotel is part of a long-festering dispute over the makeup of a town center described in a 2022 master plan as a "downtown" for the 1,200 units of veteran housing to be built on the campus — a number that would triple under a federal judge's order that the VA build an additional 2,550 units of temporary and permanent housing.

The Veterans Collective, a partnership selected by the VA to build nearly 1,000 of those housing units, is planning to incorporate the town center into four new buildings with 400 units of supportive housing above ground floor spaces for uses like a coffee shop, barber shop, tech lab, fitness center or library. Anchoring the town center would be Building 13, a 100-year-old Art Deco structure to be refurbished with a grand hall and other yet-to-be determined amenities.

Countering that vision, a 20-member board of veterans and community members created by Congress to advise the VA on development imagines the town center as a destination for veterans from the region and around the country where they can convene with resident veterans who may one day number up to 3,000.

The Veterans and Community Oversight and Engagement Board opposes supportive housing in the town center, "because of the importance of preserving a distinction (and distance) between private spaces for residents of the campus and public spaces for visitors to the campus." It has recommended a complete new master plan exclusively for the town center.

Though the board has not formally endorsed a hotel, members have said in meetings that something like the Marines' Memorial Club hotel in San Francisco should be considered in that master plan.

The board is on record disputing the VA's authority to hand off the town center, and its cost, to developers whose expertise and funding sources are primarily focused on housing. D'Andrea said the Vets Collective plan will leave 90,000 square feet for other amenities. As yet, it has not identified any tenants, he said.

Concerned that the developer's 99-year leases would lock in housing for the next century without a rigorous planning process, the board in February approached the VA's Veterans Experience Office in Washington, D.C., seeking help with data gathering to support "evidence-based recommendations."

Three weeks later, local VA officials informed the board that they were conducting a local survey in collaboration with the principal developer.

Prior to Tuesday, the VA had not published results of that survey or its methodology. Instead, it produced a seven-minute YouTube video that listed only the top 10 choices and featured interviews with veterans describing amenities they would want. Among about a dozen items they mentioned, four—golf, outdoor barbecue, pet care and arts and crafts—received fewer positive responses from veterans than hotel.

Amenities featured in the video were not selected to highlight items based on their ranking, the VA said in a statement.

"Veterans volunteered to participate in the video and [were] given the freedom to discuss whatever amenity they were interested in."

The whole survey included 51 "amenities or services." Nearly two-thirds applied campuswide, such as transportation, security and bicycle paths. Only 18 were activities, such as fitness center or banking, that might occupy a town center. Post office, a service veterans often use to get money orders for rent, was not included.

At the top of the list, "cafeteria/commissary" had support from 258 of 303 veterans surveyed. At the bottom "golf course" had 146.

"Hotel/hospitality services for veterans and their families" ranked roughly in the middle, with strong interest from 142 veterans and moderate interest from 84. Discounting the 41 non-responses, that was 86% of those who made a choice.

In June, appearing before the oversight board, Stephen Peck, the chief executive of U.S.VETS, another Vets Collective partner, emphatically denied that veterans expressed support for a hotel.

"You will see from the soon-to-be-released veterans survey that our plans include the amenities and services that veterans are asking for," Peck said, adding later, "None of the veterans in the survey mentioned the need for a hotel."

In public comment following his remarks, four veterans spoke enthusiastically of a hotel as a "great" or "wonderful" idea.

At that meeting, the board voted to recommend that VA Secretary Denis McDonough put the town center plan on hold so that other options could be considered.

McDonough has not yet responded.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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