Court Halts Closing of VA Outreach Facilities

A federal judge on Monday granted a preliminary injunction against the closing of eight government outreach centers for Vietnam War veterans, including a storefront Northridge facility.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Washington halts a plan to immediately close the Roscoe Boulevard center and move the counseling to the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Center, a VA spokesman said.

In granting the injunction, Hogan said some veterans might suffer “irreparable harm” from the closings because they would refuse to use a facility on the grounds of a VA medical center.

The Vietnam Veterans of America, which filed the suit, contends that many Vietnam veterans are alienated from the VA bureaucracy and would forgo treatment for “post-traumatic stress disorder” if they could not obtain it from one of the 188 informal drop-in centers.

The judge also said it appeared that the plaintiffs would be able to prove in a trial that the VA plan to close the centers violates the intent of Congress.

Oct. 1 Deadline

Congress has ordered the VA to close half the centers over a two-year period, but not to begin until Oct. 1. The eight proposed closings were to be a pilot program aimed at learning the best way to transfer the veterans to conventional VA facilities, a VA spokesman said.

Monday’s decision also affects VA plans to close outreach centers in Rochester, N.Y.; Fayetteville, N.C.; Oak Park, Ill.; Milwaukee; Houston; Sioux Falls, S.D., and Avon, Mass.

Mike Leaveck, a spokesman for Vietnam Veterans of America, accused the Reagan Administration of making “a lot of arbitrary decisions” regarding Vietnam veterans and predicted that Monday’s ruling “signals the end of that.”

Patronage at the centers has increased from 120,000 in 1985-86 to a projected 145,000 in 1986-87, he said.

Congress has twice before relented after ordering the centers closed, Leaveck said, and “right now, in view of the increased demand for counseling, they’re moving rapidly to postpone the closing order again.”

No figures were available from the VA on patronage at the Northridge center. The nationwide counseling program costs the government $40 million a year.