Even as Los Angeles became home to the country’s largest population of homeless military veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs for years has used much of its 387-acre tract near the city’s exclusive Brentwood neighborhood for other purposes, including leasing property to a car rental agency and the laundry facilities of a major hotel chain. This happened over the objections of veterans advocates who thought that the tract, which had been deeded to the government in 1888 for the purpose of housing disabled veterans, should be used to house some of Los Angeles’s 4,000 homeless veterans.

This week, the department agreed to settle a three-year-old lawsuit on behalf of homeless veterans by pledging to build permanent and transitional “bridge” housing on the tract and at other locations throughout greater Los Angeles. The department said it would draw up a master plan for the site by October.

There will be enough dormitories and beds at the location, which is nearly half the size of Central Park, to house every homeless veteran in the city, the department and lawyers for the veterans said. The plaintiffs in the case included several veterans and the group Vietnam Veterans of America.

Mark Rosenbaum — the director of the Public Counsel Opportunity Under Law project, a civil-rights group, and one of the lawyers representing homeless veterans — said any veteran eligible for veterans benefits would qualify to live on the site. It is hoped that much of the money to develop the housing will come from private sources, but he said the department had made clear that it would ensure that the project was fully funded, no matter what.