He later ended up on Veterans Row - Jeffrey Powers. So this was supposed to be just an emergency shelter for unhoused veterans early in the pandemic.Īnd I actually reported on that at the time and met a Navy veteran there who became a character in this podcast. And it was built after the VA created a kind of unintentional precursor to Veterans Row when they started a government-run tent city on their property right next to this block. But this particular camp dates back to about three years ago - so early pandemic. And it's not unusual to see some number of unhoused veterans around that VA campus going back years. This was a very eye-catching camp even in a city of tents. So can you just first tell us more about how this camp, Veterans Row, came to be in the first place? Thanks for having me.ĬHANG: Well, thanks for being with us. Her new podcast is called 'City Of Tents: Veterans Row.' Hey, Anna.ĪNNA SCOTT, BYLINE: Hey. It's a castle with a gate closed and a moat and crocodiles in the moat, and they're hungry, OK? And they, you know, raise the drawbridge up, you know? And they're up there with arrows, OK? That's what it is.ĬHANG: For nearly two years, reporter Anna Scott of member station KCRW has been reporting on the residents of Veterans Row, the camp's rise and fall and what it all says about how to end homelessness among veterans and nonveterans alike. The Veterans Administration is a spikes-out organization. Raposa, a Navy veteran, camped at Veterans Row for more than a year. I was trying to be everything that I could be.ĬHANG: They started camping on this particular block because of what's right next to it - a nearly 400-acre, gated medical campus run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. GABRIEL PHILLIPS: I am a veteran of the United States Army - twice war veteran. Joined the Navy, became a corpsman, and I was a combat medic.

I'm a combat medic, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. JOHN RAPOSA: I was EOD - explosive ordnance disposal. (SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, 'CITY OF TENTS: VETERANS ROW') The people who lived there nicknamed the encampment Veterans Row - people like John Raposa, Ryan Higgins, John O'Neil, Gabriel Phillips and Scott Marek. Early on in the pandemic, dozens of them set up camp on a sidewalk in the wealthy neighborhood of Brentwood, a long row of family-sized tents, many bearing an American flag. It is the largest concentration of unsheltered veterans in the country. Nearly 4,000 veterans live unhoused in Los Angeles County.

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