A more than $10 million donation is headed to the West Los Angeles VA campus, where organizers plan to convert a historic building into a wellness center offering mental health care, food assistance, legal aid, job training and VA healthcare under one roof. The gift comes from the Harbor Freight Tools Foundation, which is directing the money to the nonprofit U.S.VETS to get the project off the ground.
The foundation announced the donation Wednesday, according to NBC Los Angeles, which reported the money will fund development of the wellness center at the West LA VA campus. MyNewsLA.com also reported on the announcement as Southern California marks Veterans Day this week.
The center is designed to transform a historic VA building into what organizers describe as a one-stop resource for veterans, per the same NBC Los Angeles report. The plan calls for bringing mental health services, food assistance, legal aid, job training and VA healthcare together at the center.
Who the Center Is Expected to Reach
According to the foundation, the center will serve more than 3,000 veterans and their families on campus while extending services to more than 200,000 veterans across Greater Los Angeles, the station's report states. Those figures represent the foundation's own projections for the center's reach once it is operational.
The Harbor Freight Tools Foundation is a subsidiary of The Smidt Foundation, a private charitable organization established by company founder Eric Smidt, per the same account. The donation is aimed at supporting veteran services at the West LA VA campus.
Part of a Larger Push to Reuse Historic VA Buildings
The new wellness center would be the latest project to repurpose a historic structure on the campus for veteran services. A 2023 restoration of Buildings 205 and 208 on the same campus created 120 units of permanent supportive housing for veterans, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
That housing restoration was described as a critical component of a broader campus plan, the Conservancy noted. Separately, the Veterans Collective has outlined a wider West LA VA North Campus vision that includes more than 1,600 supportive housing units intended to house 3,000 formerly homeless and at-risk veterans, according to the Veterans Collective.
The Buildings 205 and 208 restoration created supportive housing for veterans, and Wednesday's donation would fund a proposed wellness center on the campus.
