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One American veteran has led the way in making use of a plot of land in Los Angeles. The government has said for decades that it wants to make use of that land for veterans' housing. The government said this without doing it. Then a man found his own use for some of the real estate. NPR's Quil Lawrence has his story.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: I first met John Follmer years ago doing outreach to homeless veterans on Hollywood Boulevard. Combat vets sleeping on sidewalks, steps away from the glamour and the movie stars - it was a jarring contradiction.
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LAWRENCE: But where I saw him last was the Japanese garden on the West LA VA campus, and that is a more comforting contradiction.
JOHN FOLLMER: We are here in the city. And aside from, like, an occasional helicopter, it's hard to imagine you're only a quarter mile away from the 405 freeway.
LAWRENCE: The garden was built in 1968, but for at least 20 years, it's been neglected and overgrown. That's how Follmer found it about six years ago and started to clean it up.
FOLLMER: And it's just such a peaceful place, and I think that this place truly is a deserving place for the veterans.
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LAWRENCE: There's a chain of koi ponds with giant goldfish. There are some new Japanese maple trees and a shrinking number of nonnative eucalyptus. Hopefully, beehives soon. Veterans volunteer every Thursday. One Air Force veteran comes and spends the whole day breaking sticks into mulch as a kind of meditation. Some pull weeds and clear brush. Some just hang out.
FOLLMER: So we always tell the vets, like, you don't have to come here and work. The simple art of stepping into the garden justifies its purpose.
LAWRENCE: As an aside, the land for this whole 387-acre campus was donated back in 1888 specifically for use by veterans. By 2012, an NPR investigation found the VA was using it for all sorts of other things while thousands of veterans slept on the streets. Many lawsuits and sit-ins and government promises later, there's now housing for more than 1,200 vets and construction all over the campus, but it's years behind schedule. The Trump administration promised to supercharge building here, but then did not ask for a single new bed in its budget request. VA told NPR they will request that funding later. The VA canceled some nonveteran leases, but then it appealed a court order to rapidly build new housing.
FOLLMER: Hey, Ricardo. How are you?
LAWRENCE: As he greets other vets along the path, it's not like Follmer is oblivious to all the turmoil around the campus. The garden is an escape. But it's also a key part of what the VA campus needs if it's going to be a community and not just a giant homeless shelter, he says.
FOLLMER: And so the vets are a little upset because they get this far up north campus and there's no supermarkets. There's no nothing. There's no coffee shops. There's nothing. And I have to keep telling them, just hold on. Like, something will come, and then it is our job as veterans to make the most of it.
LAWRENCE: The dream is to make it a place where vets want to live permanently, not just when they get back on their feet. There could be housing for hundreds of middle-class veterans who work at the VA hospital, or student veterans. Follmer wants to have movie showings in the natural amphitheater below the garden. Lots of activities, especially for vets recovering from addiction. They need things to help occupy them and maybe inspire them.
FOLLMER: Every single Thursday from sun-up to sundown, we're out here with master gardeners. When something was left for 20 years of neglect, now we're just learning what to take back, what to throw away. And this is proof that one year of consistency can beat back 20 years of neglect.
LAWRENCE: He sees that in himself and lots of other veterans who end up here, and in the rough beauty of the still-unfinished garden.
Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Los Angeles.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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