Lawsuit seeks to speed housing on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus
This March 17, 2018, file photo shows a housing complex in West Los Angeles that is slated for demolition. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
FILE – In this May 22, 2016, file photo then-U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan answers a question from a reporter during a news conference in New York. The federal agency is suing housing authority officials following a series of deadly fires at public housing developments around Los Angeles and San Francisco. A public housing authority in Los Angeles has been named in a lawsuit alleging negligence, the agency said Tuesday July 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal agency filed a $1-million lawsuit Wednesday against the Los Angeles Housing Agency in a bid to speed the demolition of its controversial West Los Angeles campus, where up to a third-of-the tenants are believed to be at high risk of developing a form of dementia as a result of decades of exposure to benzodiazepines.
The housing agency wants the lawsuit thrown out, saying it should not be held liable for its tenants’ health problems associated with the long-term use of a medication prescribed to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
A judge has scheduled a hearing for Aug. 31 to consider whether to dismiss the case against the housing agency, which manages 13 developments that were slated to be razed in the coming months, including the West Los Angeles complex.
The lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alleges that a senior housing complex in the West Los Angeles veterans district had a “pervasive and dangerous toxic contamination” that the housing agency ignored for years. It was first brought under a federal program to clean up contaminated properties, but the housing agency contends the federal program to which it is a victim was never meant to be used to clean up benzodiazepine-related problems.
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