Readers React: Veterans deserve better than a home without a kitchen

To the editor: Thanks to Steve Lopez for exposing the failure of the state Department of Veterans Affairs to provide disabled veterans with much-needed levels of care and housing services. (“Badly needed veterans home sits half empty; no kitchen is a problem,” Column, Sept. 9)

The kitchen issue for the half-empty veterans home in West L.A. should have been solved years ago. Why not have the meals for residents catered until this is resolved? We’re talking only up to 400 meals per day.

West L.A. is not the only state home that has been experiencing major vacancy rates. There are eight homes in California, and most are under-utilized, at a time when dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder are at record levels.

These beds are critically needed. Our veterans deserve more.

Toni Reinis, Marina del Rey

The writer is executive director of New Directions, a service organization for homeless veterans.

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To the editor: It is beyond frustrating — in fact, it’s infuriating — that the home for veterans needs a kitchen and through pathetic bureaucratic bungling cannot get one until 2016.

American citizens, pundits and politicians spew unending self-righteous palaver elaborating their love for our soldiers and veterans. Yet improving the veterans health system, expediting applications for services or building this kitchen is always a matter of “hurry up and wait.” This is flat unacceptable.

I suggest the state contact HGTV and the show “Property Brothers.” In each episode, a house is gutted and nicely remodeled in a matter of weeks.

Give them the specs for an industrial kitchen and step aside. In a month or so, they will create a gleaming kitchen and, I am willing to bet, for well under $770,000.

Jo Ellen Johnson, Los Angeles

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