UCLA School of Law professor emeritus Gary Blasi and lecturer Melissa Tyner, director of the Homeless Veterans Project, have received the California Lawyer Attorney of the Year (CLAY) Award for 2016.
Blasi and Tyner served on a team of lawyers that brought a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of homeless veterans with serious disabilities. The lawsuit charged that the V.A. was not serving the housing needs of homeless veterans with serious mental disabilities and had for decades misused a large parcel of land in West Los Angeles that was deeded in 1888 for the specific purpose of housing disabled veterans. Instead of housing veterans, however, the V.A. wrongly leased nearly 30 percent of the 387-acre site to private entities, or allowed the land to remain underused.
As a result of the legal team’s effort and the expansion of V.A. housing resources for veterans in the community, the number of homeless veterans in Los Angeles declined by 40 percent in the 12 months ending in January 2016, while the overall numbers of homeless adults were increasing by 11 percent.
Blasi, who serves as special counsel at Public Counsel, the nation’s largest pro bono law firm, also won a CLAY Award in 2015 for his work on behalf of the poorest welfare recipients in California. The award is given annually by the Daily Journal and California Lawyer to lawyers whose work has had significant impact.
This story was adapted from the original published by the UCLA School of Law.