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Ranking member presses VA on 'Project Safe Harbor' guardianship paperwork; VA says documents were erroneous
Summary
A heated exchange focused on Project Safe Harbor: Ranking Member Takano entered internal VA documents suggesting the pilot targeted homeless veterans for guardianship; VA's Dr. Thomas O'Toole said those documents were erroneous and clarified the pilot targets about 700 inpatients lacking decision‑making capacity, roughly half of whom may be homeless.
Ranking Member Takano pressed Dr. Thomas O’Toole over internal documents related to "Project Safe Harbor," asking whether VA had shifted strategy from seeking congressional authority to pursuing memoranda of understanding to obtain guardianship authority in state courts.
Takano said internal materials suggested the pilot was aligned with an executive order “ending crime and disorder on America's streets” and targeted homeless veterans. He entered the documents into the record and urged VA to abandon the approach if that was the intent.
Dr. O’Toole rejected that characterization on the record: "On the record, sir, those are erroneous. Of the 700 veterans that are currently boarding in an acute care bed, about half of them are homeless or at imminent risk of homelessness," he said, adding the initiative is intended to secure legal guardianship only for inpatients who lack decision‑making capacity and have no next of kin so they can be moved to safer, more appropriate placements.
O’Toole said VA does not currently have statutory authority to petition state courts for guardianship in broad outreach contexts and that the documents in question were internal drafts that misrepresented the initiative’s scope. He pledged to provide written clarification and meet with committee staff to discuss the legal strategy.
Takano and other members voiced concern that guardianship is a last resort and urged VA to be transparent about the population it would target and the safeguards it would adopt. The committee accepted Takano’s request to enter the internal documents into the record for follow‑up.
The exchange ended with the chairman allowing the documents into the record and VA agreeing to provide further written clarification.
