Till you see a digital camera pan over the lengthy row of Coleman tents lining the sidewalk, almost all with American flags neatly affixed to the entrance, the outrage of a veteran-specific homeless group within the coronary heart of Los Angeles may not totally resonate. When the picture is paired with the sprawling and partially empty Division of Veterans Affairs campus this homeless “Veterans Row” abuts, the dissonance is full. Los Angeles is, we be taught, the nation’s hub for veteran homelessness, with an estimated 4,000 unhoused vets.
In “The Promised Land,” a brand new brief documentary by Military veteran Rebecca Murga for reporting studio Lengthy Lead, creators are relying on these placing visuals to speak a message 100 information tales may not.
The documentary, launched on Lengthy Lead’s web site and lately screened earlier than an viewers of veteran advocates in Washington, D.C., took form out of Murga’s personal curiosity as a Los Angeles resident who usually handed by these tents.
“My curiosity was already piqued at, what’s been occurring, and why aren’t these buildings getting used,” Murga mentioned in a telephone interview.
Because it occurred, her embarkation on the undertaking got here as this open-air veteran enclave grew to become nationwide information by way of a class-action lawsuit in federal courtroom. The criticism within the swimsuit, introduced in December 2023 by 14 veterans, was additionally on the coronary heart of Murga’s story: the vets’ argument that the West Los Angeles VA Medical Middle needed to observe by way of on its dedication to construct greater than 1,000 everlasting supportive housing models for veterans.
Days after the 23-minute documentary’s D.C. screening, related information broke: The U.S. Division of Housing and City Improvement introduced it could change a rule that counted veterans’ incapacity advantages as revenue, a coverage that excluded some Los Angeles vets from VA housing eligibility.
Within the documentary, Robert, an Air Power veteran ultimately admitted into one of many VA’s roughly 250 housing models, decries the state of affairs.
“I’ve a stupendous view of the ocean,” he says, gesturing to the veteran standing subsequent to him carrying a prosthetic leg. “He misplaced his leg in Afghanistan saving one other soldier. … He will get to be homeless on the streets of L.A.”
However significant change remains to be a piece in progress, mentioned John Patrick Pullen, founding editor of Lengthy Lead.
“I don’t suppose it’s a performed deal, and I want I could possibly be extra optimistic about it,” Pullen mentioned. “It’s undoubtedly not a repair, as a result of even when that coverage modifications, and all of the veterans who want housing are in a position to get cleared and keep in that housing, there’s not sufficient housing on that (VA) property.”
The Lengthy Lead documentary makers don’t see themselves as advocates, although their point-of-view comes by way of clearly within the movie. For Murga, the highest precedence was preserving the dignity of topics all too accustomed to exploitation: navy veterans and the unhoused.
“You may’t simply present up with a digital camera, as a result of lots of people have performed that earlier than,” she mentioned. “You recognize, they present up with a digital camera, they take a number of images and also you by no means hear from them once more.”
First, she needed to earn the belief of Rob Reynolds, an Military vet who’s been described because the “de facto supervisor of Veterans’ Row.” A previously unhoused veteran, he’s a plaintiff within the lawsuit and a self-appointed advocate and protector of the veterans nonetheless looking for housing. Incomes her manner into the circle took years, Murga mentioned. She felt spending Thanksgiving with the veterans, and filming as they shared a scorching meal, helped guarantee them of her intentions.
“That was the primary time they supplied to indicate me the place they lived and inside their properties and stuff like that,” she mentioned.
A number of outstanding personalities emerge within the movie, together with Josh, a tattooed, harmonica-playing Military infantryman who’d simply been denied on-campus VA housing. Later, he’s joined by Derek, one other former Military grunt with an enormous character who rides a motorbike and wears a beanie over his lengthy, strawberry-blond hair. Derek, who’d lately moved into one of many momentary VA tiny properties constructed in the course of the pandemic, says his lodging is sort of a “10-star lodge” in comparison with dwelling on the road.
“There goes the neighborhood,” Josh jokes. “Two 11 bravos in a single place, what are we going to do.”
It’s jarring when, later within the movie, we discover out Derek has died as a result of an obvious drug overdose, a month after lastly getting moved into everlasting housing.
Murga discovered about Derek’s demise as her cameras had been rolling. Regardless of her heartbreak, she realized she needed to embrace the second within the movie.
“We don’t know the numbers of people that have died (on the road),” she mentioned. “I believed it was vital to incorporate him, as a result of he was so candy and so type and so open, and since he had been ready so lengthy.”
The category-action lawsuit went to trial in early August in U.S. District Court docket within the Central District of California. Lengthy Lead is publishing updates, as many as one a day, on its web site as arguments progress.
“We’re going to maintain urgent with it,” Pullen mentioned. “I believe that it’s one thing that everyone ought to see and perceive, whether or not they dwell in Los Angeles or not. As a result of this can be a nationwide epidemic.”
