The Brief

Within about 2 square miles in Koreatown, L.A. diners can find more than 700 restaurants offering everything from Oaxacan cuisine to French fine dining, from the kind of sundubu-jjigae tofu stew championed by Anthony Bourdain to an array of Korean barbecue joints.

L.A.’s culinary scene is already diverse, and this neighborhood provides a huge variety of densely-packed dining options. But when it comes to housing, Koreatown restaurant workers are provided with few choices.

That’s according to a new study published Tuesday by researchers with the UCLA Labor Center and the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA).

“Koreatown is fueled by an immigrant workforce who are largely low-wage,” said study co-author Saba Waheed, research director at the UCLA Labor Center.

Too much rent — or too many roommates

Relying on U.S. Census Bureau statistics, restaurant industry data and previous academic studies — as well as worker surveys and interviews — the researchers found:

• 72% of Koreatown restaurant workers earn low wages (about $17 per hour or less), defined as less than two-thirds of the area’s median wage.
• 74% were born outside the U.S., primarily in Mexico, Central America or South Korea
• 98% are renters, and only 2% are homeowners
• 59% live in overcrowded or severely overcrowded housing based on federal standards
• 46% spend more than 30% of their income on rent, a level considered “rent burdened” under federal guidelines.

Housing costs have been a main concern in recent strikes by L.A. hotel workers and Hollywood actors and writers. High rents have also been painful for the restaurant workers surveyed in the study.

Waheed said workers included in the study feel like low-wages and expensive housing are forcing them to pick one of two bad options: pay more than they can really afford for an apartment with enough space, or cram into crowded apartments to split costs with others.

“The wages issue is crucial there if folks still feel like they have to live in overcrowded housing,” she said.

Public health experts have blamed cramped housing conditions for fueling the rapid spread of COVID-19 in certain parts of L.A. during earlier phases of the pandemic.

Workers say wage and tip theft is common

The study follows recent reports of wage theft in Koreatown.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor announced a nearly $67,000 fine against Oo-Kook, a Korean barbecue restaurant, for allowing a manager to keep more than $28,000 in workers’ tips. Similar investigations have found wage theft happening in other Koreatown restaurants.

In interviews for the study, workers told the researchers that their managers frequently withhold tips. One employee said new staffers in their workplace are put “on probation” and do not receive tips during this period. Others described a “half tip” policy designed to punish workers for perceived infractions by withholding 50% of their weekly tips.

Brady Collins, KIWA’s director of research and policy, thinks practices like this require solutions that go beyond simply hiking the minimum wage. He suggested policies such as setting up industry councils where workers and business owners create and enforce workplace standards.

“We've got to think about how we are crafting something that is actually going to improve working conditions and empower workers,” Collins said.

Restaurant industry representatives have said existing law already governs wage and tip theft. LAist reached out to the California Restaurant Association, which declined to comment on the study.

Previous research on L.A. restaurants has found other workers also struggling to keep a roof over their head. The L.A. nonprofit research organization Economic Roundtable recently estimated that L.A. County is home to nearly 3,600 unhoused fast food workers.

Many Koreatown restaurant employees work in full-service establishments, but they say they’re facing the same housing struggles.

Balancing workers’ needs with small business survival

Sunny Choi has worked as a server in a Koreatown Asian fusion noodle restaurant for about five years. She earns the city of L.A.’s minimum wage of $16.78 per hour plus tips. She said customers shifted to take-out during the pandemic, and with fewer people dining in, her tips have dropped to about $10 per hour.

Choi says unlike other restaurant employees working multiple jobs to pay rent, she and her husband can afford the $1,500 monthly mortgage on a Harbor City condo they bought 20 years ago. But she said her commute is draining, and living in Koreatown isn’t a financial option.

“It’s good to work [in Koreatown],” Choi said in Korean, speaking through an interpreter. But a similarly sized apartment closer to her job would be “expensive, very expensive.”

While workers struggle with housing costs, small business owners also face pressure to keep prices low. At a time when inflation is eating into expendable income — and some businesses are coming under fire for adding confusing surcharges to customers’ bills — diners crave deals.

UCLA’s Saba Waheed said policy makers seeking to help workers should think creatively about responding to concerns from small, immigrant entrepreneurs.

“We want to conserve the mom and pops in the neighborhood while we're getting these bigger businesses coming in,” Waheed said. “How can we make sure that the workers are feeling sustained, that they're protected, and that they can continue to live there?”

The study points to Koreatown as a microcosm of a much larger problem. The neighborhood is home to nearly 10,000 restaurant workers. But across L.A. County, there are more than 300,000 people working in restaurants.

We’ve all had a problem neighbor at one time or another, but what if they howled at the moon?

That’s what West Hollywood is dealing with right now at a so-called “coyote condo,” where a pack has taken over a construction site, leading to complaints from residents.

Now, officials are making the property owner take action.

How we got here

Coyotes often show up in Southern California’s urban areas looking for food, but these ones are sticking around.

The pack is squatting in an unfinished site near the corner of North Spaulding Avenue and Romaine Street.

The area was supposed to become a 22-unit condominium building, according to the city. However, construction stopped in 2024 and permits have since expired.

The roughly 19,500-square-feet lot is fenced off. Coyotes have been seen traversing the bare wood frames, though it’s unclear if they’ve caused any other problems besides being a nuisance.

What’s next

West Hollywood said its Neighborhood and Business Safety Division is in touch with the owner’s representative.

“As with any privately owned property, the owner is responsible for maintaining the site,” the city said in a statement.

Officials are requiring the owner to “promptly” retain a wildlife control operator that specializes in humane wildlife management. That expert is tasked with assessing and recommending next steps, so it’s still unclear how the coyote problem will be dealt with.

The city of West Hollywood follows a coyote coexistence plan, which only recommends lethal action for unprovoked human attacks. Wild animal relocation is also generally illegal under state regulations because moving them can disrupt local ecosystems and spread disease.

However, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife can give written permission to relocate coyotes under certain circumstances. The city says it will update residents on its website as new information becomes available.

In the meantime, don’t feed the coyotes and take caution when you’re in the area. Keep pets on a leash and indoors, if you live close. Coyotes are known to attack small animals. Young children can also get targeted, but it’s less common.

You can learn more about how these urban canines live in our coyote guide.

A state appeals court ruled Monday that Long Beach must rehire an officer it fired four years ago after he was accused of lying in official reports.

The unanimous decision from the three-judge panel upholds a previous ruling from a city employment panel and a lower court. It also brings an end to a roughly five-year legal saga during which the city filed two appeals in an attempt to keep former Long Beach police Officer Dedier Reyes off the force, even at a time when the department has struggled to fill vacancies.

Long Beach City Attorney Dawn McIntosh said she was “disappointed” by Monday’s decision by the appeals court, but said her office does not plan to file any further appeals.

Monday’s ruling means Long Beach owes Reyes more than four years of pay he has missed since his dismissal, and the city must offer him a job with the police department that is on par with his previous position as a patrol officer. Records from Transparent California show Reyes’ base salary was $121,948 in his last full year at the LBPD.

The city fired Reyes in 2022, shortly after he was charged with one count of filing a false police report and one count of perjury for allegedly lying about his observations during a 2018 gun arrest. A jury ultimately acquitted Reyes and his less-experienced partner, Officer David Salcedo.

But the charges, the city’s firing of the two officers and the criminal trial that followed, cast doubt on their credibility. As a result, prosecutors dropped dozens of cases where the two made arrests or would’ve needed to testify to make the case.

Reyes, who was training Salcedo, was accused of lying and perjuring himself when he wrote in a February 2018 police report that he recognized two gang members standing outside a Long Beach taqueria and then saw one go inside and leave a bag containing a gun.

Surveillance video from the taqueria made internal affairs investigators question how Reyes could have seen what was happening inside the restaurant and also showed he arrested the wrong gang member for allegedly carrying the bag with the gun.

Reyes later told internal affairs investigators that he “made a mistake in this police report,” according to an interview transcript from a separate civil lawsuit.

Reyes and Salcedo continued working and weren’t criminally accused for nearly four years after the incident. Then-District Attorney Jackie Lacey reviewed the case and decided it didn’t merit charges, but when George Gascón became the new District Attorney in 2021 — after making police reform central to his campaign — he brought charges against the officers.

After their acquittal on the criminal charges, a city employment panel ruled they must be rehired, but Long Beach sued to try to block that decision.

After reviewing all of the evidence, the three-judge appeals panel sided with Reyes on Monday. They found it plausible that he mistakenly recalled the events leading up to the 2018 arrest and noted that the city “identified no apparent motive” for him to falsify the police report, according to their ruling.

When the city fired Reyes, it noted that he had racked up 14 use-of-force reviews and 11 citizen complaints since 2010, according to court documents. But the department determined that all of those uses of force were within policy and none of the citizen complaints were determined to have merit, the court noted in its ruling.

Long Beach has, however, been sued twice over Reyes’ alleged misconduct, resulting in payouts of $550,000 and $499,800.

After Monday’s ruling, Reyes will have the option of rejoining LBPD.

Salcedo has already been rehired and assigned to work patrol, LBPD Executive Communications Officer Allison Gallagher wrote in an email last October.

Canter's Deli turns 95 this year, and the iconic Jewish deli and coffee shop will sell its hot pastrami sandwich — with coleslaw, pickle and chocolate chip rugelach — for 95 cents.

Is there a catch?

No. But dine-in only, limit one per customer.

I don’t eat meat

Lucky you — a plant-based corned beef substitute is available.

Why it matters

The Fairfax institution has been feeding Angelenos since 1953, serving everyone from the neighborhood's Jewish community to the Supreme-loving skate punks who arrived decades later.

Co-owner Marc Canter, the third-generation owner, put it best: Canter's is the place where "grandkids grow up and bring their grandkids."

Why 95 cents?

Canter says the price is purely symbolic of the anniversary, not the actual cost — they charged 50 cents for the 50th anniversary and 75 cents for the 75th.

The history

Now three generations deep, the family has logged roughly 159 years combined behind the counter: Canter's grandfather, about 50; his father, about 65; and Marc himself, 44 and counting.

The sprawling namesake business started in 1931, when Marc Canter’s grandparents sold corned beef sandwiches off a cart in Jersey City before landing in Boyle Heights on Brooklyn Avenue (now César Chávez Avenue).

Canter said his Aunt Selma struck out on her own in 1948 at age 23 and moved the business to Fairfax. Her parents joined her there in 1953. One current employee has been on staff since 1964 — 62 years and counting.

Despite the neighborhood's changes, Canter's hasn't: No remodels, no menu overhauls. The matzo ball soup, potato pancakes, and cheese blintzes have never left.

"The ancestors are watching from above," Canter said, "so you have to keep [going] to make them proud."

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is failing to provide adequate healthcare at a new detention center in California City, according to a report from an independent monitor at the facility, where detainees complained of missing medications and months-long delays to cancer treatment.

The findings appear in a report by Dr. Muthusamy Anandkumar, a court- appointed monitor of the California City Immigration Processing Center, which is about 75 miles east of Bakersfield and run by the private prison company CoreCivic. The federal government purchased the facility earlier this month, but CoreCivic continues to operate it.

A judge appointed the monitor in March as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by seven detainees who allege the conditions in the California City facility are a violation of their due process rights.

“The facility lacks a reliable system to consistently provide adequate health care, placing individuals at serious risk of both immediate and long-term harm,” Anandkumar wrote. “This pattern indicates broader problems in the facility's healthcare delivery system rather than occasional lapses in care.”

The fault, Anandkumar wrote, was not with the individual healthcare workers, but rather an issue of staffing, management and oversight. At times, staff was pulled out of training to cover a shift because of staffing shortages.

“As a result, staff who had not been fully trained were themselves training new staff,” Anandkumar wrote. “Given the number of patients and the seriousness of their medical and mental health needs, these substantial gaps contribute to an unsafe environment.”

Anandkumar found 13 areas of deficiency in CoreCivic’s healthcare program in California City. Among them were inadequate emergency care, dental care and chronic disease management. The monitor also found that the facility did not provide timely access to prescribed medications.

ICE opened the immigration detention center at the site of a closed state prison and began admitting detainees in August. In September, a state disability rights group conducted a two-day inspection of the facility and found that its operators failed to distribute medication for life-threatening conditions and did not schedule timely surgeries for people that needed them.

The findings of that two-day inspection by Disability Rights California mirror many of the conclusions found 10 months later by Anandkumar, including delays in response to acute sick call requests and a failure to distribute prescription medication for conditions requiring consistent management like diabetes, high blood pressure and seizures.

A CoreCivic spokesperson said the facility provides daily access to physical and mental care services, and said emergency medical services are available 24 hours a day, every day.

“When specialty or advanced care is required beyond the services available onsite, facility healthcare staff coordinate with community physicians, hospitals, and specialty providers to facilitate access to medically necessary treatment,” said CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin. “While we work diligently to arrange and support those appointments, the scheduling, availability, and capacity of outside providers are not controlled by the facility.”

Gustin said compliance with detention standards in immigration detention facilities is monitored by an ICE compliance officer.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in the Northern District of California by people held in California City claims detainees do not have appropriate clothing for the chilly desert nights, nor appropriate medical attention for life-threatening conditions. The lawsuit alleges detainees with mobility issues don’t have access to wheelchairs, and in some cases are unable to bathe or dress themselves.

Sokhean Keo, a California City detainee and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against ICE said in a statement distributed by the ACLU that he never received the medication he was prescribed for an infection.

“If there is no change to this system,” Keo said, “sick people are going to die.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.