Letter to the Editor: Empty beds, growing budgets, waiting veterans
Dear Editor,
A recent letter to the Yountville Sun suggested that the drop in residents at the Veterans Home of California, Yountville, simply reflects better living conditions, with private rooms replacing open bays. Private rooms are a welcome improvement, but that is not why the numbers have fallen, and it misses the real concern.
According to CalVet’s own end-of-September census, the home has 553 residents, not 600. In all of September, only five new veterans were admitted. That is not for lack of need. The State Assembly’s budget subcommittee noted this year that more than 200 veterans are on the waiting list. Meanwhile, a new 240-bed skilled nursing facility, which the state budget said would be completed in 2025-26, still has not opened. Just 167 veterans are in skilled nursing and memory care combined. Veterans who need care are waiting, while beds paid for with public money sit empty.
The need will only grow. Post-9/11 veterans returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with high rates of traumatic brain injury, and a 2022 study of VA data found they face higher odds of early-onset dementia after a brain injury, with risk rising as injuries become more severe. A Harvard study estimates the cost of caring for post-9/11 veterans will reach $2.2 to $2.5 trillion by 2050, with most of that care still ahead, because veterans’ needs peak decades after a war. These veterans will need exactly the memory care and nursing care Yountville was built to provide.
The money has not gone down. The home’s state operating budget for 2026-27 is $173.7 million, up from $123.9 million two years ago, an increase of about 40 percent. That is more than $314,000 per resident per year.
With fewer veterans served and far more money spent, the public has every right to ask why beds sit empty, why the waiting list keeps growing, and where the money is going. And how many veterans have died waiting on that list over the last 20 years?
As far back as 2008, the California state auditor found the home did not regularly track what happened to veterans waiting for a bed. Raising these questions is not an attack on the home or its staff. It is what our veterans deserve, and anyone who wants to represent them should be asking too.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Stewart
U.S. Navy Veteran
Veterans Home of California, Yountville Member
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