The Brief

Wendy Powitzky thought she’d finally found a way off the street in Orange County.

The former hairdresser had spent years sleeping in her car and parks around Anaheim, near the suburban salons where she used to work. One day a social worker told Powitzky about an old piano shop recently converted into a shelter.

She just had to clear security to reach her new twin bed.

That’s where guards at the taxpayer-funded shelter groped and strip-searched her and several of her neighbors, and left them in constant fear of eviction, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of eight former Orange County shelter residents.

“It was going to be my saving grace,” Powitzky said of the Anaheim shelter. “It was more unsafe.”

As California’s homeless population spiked nearly 40% in the past five years, the growth has been accompanied by a boom in private security. Governments, nonprofits and businesses are increasingly turning to hired guards to triage homelessness, opening a new front in the state’s housing crisis — one ripe for violence and civil rights issues, but thin on accountability and state oversight.

More than a dozen recent legal proceedings and public contract disputes reviewed by CalMatters suggest that, rather than ensuring safety, guards can compound already dangerous and chaotic situations.

Shelter residents in multiple Southern California cities have alleged in lawsuits that they were raped or sexually assaulted by shelter guards, including a Los Angeles case where a guard was sentenced to prison after a homeless woman complained of repeated abuse. In Sausalito, people living at a publicly funded tent city said in court that contract workers dealt drugs and harassed women. After a homeless woman in L.A. was stabbed to death by a fellow shelter resident, her family sued a guard for negligence in an ongoing lawsuit, alleging that he remained at an onsite office despite loud screams during a long attack.

No state agency publicly tracks how many guards work with homeless people, let alone what happens when things go wrong. The California agency that regulates guards — the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services — denied a CalMatters public records request for complaints and reports of violence involving guards and homeless people.

Several lawsuits, meanwhile, allege that security companies, shelter operators and government regulators have failed to properly train and oversee guards, who in some cases are paid just over minimum wage and struggling to stay housed themselves.

“Private security is a lot cheaper than cops,” said Paul Boden, executive director of activist group the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “And a lot less regulated.”

Around the world, economic researchers have found that private security reliance tends to rise along with income inequality and fear of crime. The industry grew nearly 20% in California from 2010 to 2022, the most recent state data shows, to more than 301,000 licensed guards — a force that outnumbered sworn law enforcement officers roughly 4 to 1.

In recent decades, court rulings have put some limits on local governments’ and police’s ability to clear encampments and interact with homeless people. Private guards are bound by different rules.

The legal complaints against security guards underscore bigger flaws in the state’s approach to homelessness. Guards and other front-line workers often aren’t trained to handle complex social issues. And despite public officials who criticize homeless people for rejecting shelter, some unhoused people say shelters and city-run encampments can be worse than the street.

More political pressure is on the horizon. This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on whether clearing encampments when there is no shelter available violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign includes a plan to “relocate” homeless people from cities, arresting those who refuse and sending others to large tent cities. In California, a bipartisan statewide bill would make it easier to sweep encampments and ticket or move people off the street.

As crackdowns loom, homeless advocates argue that pouring money into stopgaps such as private security and temporary shelters — rather than permanent housing — will breed more problems.

“You put people in power over incredibly vulnerable people who are dependent for their very place to live,” said Minouche Kandel, a staff attorney for American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “It’s a setup for abuse of power.”

The O Lot Safe Sleeping site at Balboa Park in San Diego on March 22, 2024. Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters

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The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services said it has received 20,475 total private security complaints since 2019, but that it has no way to search for how many involved unhoused people.

“The Bureau looks into every complaint it receives, and when determining if a violation has occurred, the Bureau relies on facts and information obtained during the course of an investigation,” the agency said in a statement.

Former shelter residents like Powitzky are the first to note that there can be very real security concerns associated with homelessness. It isn’t easy, she said, for people who have struggled with trauma, constant stress and sometimes addiction or mental illness to live in close quarters with limited privacy.

That’s why she was initially reassured by the uniformed guards at the front door of Anaheim’s La Mesa shelter in 2019.

One night when Powitzky attempted to enter the shelter with her adult son, a guard approached after she cleared the metal detector and told her to put her arms up. The guard proceeded to “rub her hands all over” Powitzky’s breasts, she said in the lawsuit, making her son “uncomfortable watching his mother get touched in this manner.” Powitzky didn’t complain for fear of eviction.

Later that same month, Powitzky said another shelter guard forced her to expose her breasts in front of male guards and other residents. More invasive searches where guards “inappropriately rubbed” her body followed, she said in the lawsuit, even after she did complain.

“I honestly just felt like they wanted to get people out of there — ‘You’re going to do what we want, or you’re going to get out of here,’” Powitzky told CalMatters. “It’s a horrible way to run a situation for people that are already having problems with their life.”

The shelter was built by the city of Anaheim and run by the nonprofit Illumination Foundation, which then contracted with L.A.-based security company Protection America. The foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment about how much they paid the guards, or the allegations by residents. In response to the ongoing lawsuit, the foundation and the city of Anaheim said in court filings that security searches were a city requirement at the shelter, but that neither party “can be held vicariously liable for alleged sexual battery” by guards.

The La Mesa shelter was shuttered in 2022 as part of a plan to focus on and expand another city shelter, Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster said in a statement. Protection America and Orange County declined to comment. The security company denied the allegations in a January court filing.

“We require high standards for our shelters and expect security to be done with compassion and respect,” Lyster said in the statement. “The issues raised here were taken seriously and investigated. We stand by our shelter operator’s work and procedures at La Mesa.”

In addition to the searches, Powitzky said in the lawsuit that it was impossible to work her way out of the shelter; she lost two jobs due to scheduling issues with a strict curfew. She left in early 2020 when COVID hit, not wanting to get stuck inside with shelter staff and guards who, the lawsuit alleged, appeared to lack appropriate training.

“I’m still in limbo. I sleep in my car at night,” Powitsky said in the interview. “I will never go to a shelter again.”

Encampment wars

On the first sunny morning after days of tent-thrashing rain on Skid Row, a downtown Los Angeles native and longtime activist known as General Dogon (given name Steve Richardson) is rallying the neighborhood. Between taking orders for new sleeping bags financed by an online fundraiser, the Los Angeles Community Action Network organizer points out the security guards that dot the streets around him.

Just around the corner was where, three decades earlier, Dogon saw the first of what he called “the red shirts” — uniformed, armed private guards hired by a local tax-funded business group charged with cleaning up downtown. He’s been fighting them ever since.

California’s private security industry has existed for more than a century, but in 1994 state lawmakers granted the business groups — formally known as Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs — a right to spend public money on private security. Dogon had just gotten back from serving a long prison sentence and was living in a nearby residential hotel when he started to hear stories that turned into class-action lawsuits.

“They was jacking up homeless people, taking their tents, pushing them down the street,” he recalled. “They were so bad, we was getting complaints from drug dealers that they was taking the drug dealers’ stuff.”

First: General Dogon stands behind caution tape and observes an encampment sweep along a block of Skid Row. Last: ​​An encampment sweep by the city of Los Angeles along a block of Skid Row.

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Jules Hotz

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Dogon had a front-row seat for court battles in the 1990s and 2000s that added some checks to prevent BIDs and their guards from harassing people and destroying belongings.

But with California now home to a record 181,000 homeless residents, tension on public streets is hitting another high. And when it comes to private security, BIDs were just the beginning.

Guards still patrol many property-tax-funded downtown districts. Cities are also directly entering into contracts with security companies and nonprofits to patrol encampments or other public areas. Some businesses and residents hire their own guards, frustrated by property crime and what they consider a lack of police responsiveness.

For security companies, it all adds up to surging demand from clients who increasingly expect them to replicate law enforcement, complete with guns, body cams and pricey liability insurance, said Robert Simpson, owner of Fresno County Private Security. It’s a far cry from earlier eras of “observe and report” security, he said, when guards were trained to call police for social issues or more heated conflicts.

“Now if we make that phone call, they may show up two, three days later,” said Simpson, whose company was sued after a guard shot a homeless man in what the guard described as self-defense. “We’re navigating what is being presented to us.”

Some security companies advertise “transient eviction” or other services to “control and manage any homeless activity.” In LA, security company DTLA Patrol and its armed, state-licensed guards were featured in a report on a local TV station on how “Private Security Helps LAPD in Homeless Crisis.”

“Essentially, we are a subscription-based law enforcement service,” the company’s founder told KNBC in 2020, emphasizing that his guards focus on private rather than public property.

State-licensed security guards must undergo background checks and complete 40 hours of required training within their first six months on the job, compared to 664 hours for law enforcement basic training.

The state also requires guards to take a series of classes offered by dozens of state-authorized private companies or colleges. Classes span citizen’s arrests, terrorism and de-escalation, plus a “public relations” course that covers diversity, mental illness and substance use. In recent years, state lawmakers moved to require new use-of-force training and reporting standards, after which incident reports more than doubled from 2019 to 2023, state reports show.

Now, the security boom is poised to collide with encampment backlash.

California Sen. Brian Jones, a San Diego Republican, is leading a bipartisan effort to strengthen encampment bans in cities across the state. Senate Bill 1011 is modeled on a San Diego camping ban designed to push people into large, outdoor tent cities with 24-hour security.

Any concerns about security or other civil rights issues, Jones said, should be weighed against dire street conditions.

“Those things are happening in the encampments, too — you know, sexual assault, drug abuse, drug overdoses, murder, attacks,” Jones said. “It’s easier to keep an eye on and enforce if the locality does decide to use a safe camping site.”

Homeless people and their advocates, meanwhile, say security guards are just one of several converging threats. Police shootings of homeless people have spurred other wrongful death and excessive force lawsuits. Two serial killers recently targeted people in tents in LA and Stockton.

All told, death rates for homeless people more than tripled in the past decade, the University of Pennsylvania found. Advocates across the country increasingly worry about vigilante violence, as Kentucky weighs a measure that would decriminalize shooting people camping on private land.

“It’s a really scary time,” said Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. “When we have governments giving permission to their own law enforcement to harass and punish people, it gives an implicit green light to others.”

The new guard

Small local security companies. Bigger regional firms winning contracts across the state. Global private security behemoths that dabble in homeless shelters.

In the sea of companies vying for publicly funded homeless security work in California, one newcomer stands out: a six-year-old San Francisco nonprofit called Urban Alchemy. It insists it’s not a security company at all, but it has received public funds earmarked for security and been called a “de facto” security provider in legal complaints filed by former shelter residents.

Urban Alchemy advertises street cleaning services and “complementary strategies to conventional policing and security.” Its revenue quickly multiplied — from $36,000 in 2019 to $51 million in 2022, tax records show — after winning a slew of contracts to manage city-funded shelters and sanctioned encampments.

With a motto of “No fuckery,” the marketing revolves around de-escalation, “calming public spaces” and employing workers who have experienced homelessness, poverty and incarceration.

Some who have lived in shelters managed by Urban Alchemy tell a different story.

“They come on very friendly and sympathetically and then use drugs to take advantage of us, many of whom are struggling to stay clean,” one former resident of a Sausalito site contracted to Urban Alchemy, said in a 2022 court filing in a wide-ranging civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Outreach workers hired by Mitch O'Farrell's council district hand out food and water to unhoused people at an encampment near the Shatto Recreation Center on Nov. 2.

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Urban Alchemy won a $463,000 city contract to manage the Sausalito tent city housed at a public tennis court during the pandemic. In the civil rights suit, which the city eventually paid $540,000 to settle, encampment residents alleged that Urban Alchemy workers sexually harassed women and “used and trafficked methamphetamine.”

The city did not respond to requests for comment, but said in a legal filing that two Urban Alchemy workers were removed from the site and one was fired, and that no police reports were filed. Urban Alchemy’s contract with the city was not renewed, and the organization denied the allegations in a statement to CalMatters. The nonprofit has larger ongoing government contracts in LA, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, where another former worker is awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder after shooting a person outside the shelter where he was working.

Urban Alchemy declined to make an executive available for an interview. The organization said in a statement that its workers complete “extensive training,” including two days of paid lessons and roleplaying on conflict resolution, complex trauma and inclusivity. Workers are not required to be state-licensed as guards, and people with criminal backgrounds could be ineligible under state law.

In an email, Urban Alchemy’s community and government affairs head Kirkpatrick Tyler said, “Urban Alchemy practitioners do life-saving work in our communities that is more difficult than most of us could imagine.” When it comes to security issues, he said workers are taught to use “emotional bank accounts” and follow a six-step process to de-escalate: “If at any point during this process, a person becomes violent or has a weapon, practitioners will call the authorities.”

Tyler said the nonprofit is “saddened by the news media’s repeated eagerness to regurgitate every one of these kinds of claims it hears about Urban Alchemy – an organization that happens to be composed of more than 90% Black formerly incarcerated long term offenders.”

Several of Urban Alchemy’s own workers have also sued the nonprofit over alleged labor and wage violations, discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe work environments. A San Francisco sexual harassment case – which Urban Alchemy has denied – is ongoing, and the organization has settled other labor lawsuits in San Francisco and LA.

Carmina Portillo heard about the job by chance. The 38-year-old LA resident and auto mechanic was homeless herself and evangelizing at a park when she got curious about a man in uniform sitting next to a Porta Potty.

“I asked the guy there how much he was getting paid, and it was $19 an hour,” Portillo said. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot for just sitting there.’”

Last year, she filed a lawsuit against Urban Alchemy over alleged unpaid wages, discrimination and wrongful termination after working for eight months at an LA “Safe Sleep” site — a temporary outdoor shelter lined with city-funded tents. It was always an unwieldy job, Portillo said, ranging from making sure no one was overdosing to cleaning bathrooms or serving food.

State records show Portillo wasn’t licensed for security work. Rather, she and colleagues were left to “take matters into our own hands,” she said in an interview, if problems arose. In one case, Portillo said in the lawsuit that a supervisor discouraged her from calling for medical help after a homeless resident told her in Spanish that he was in distress.

Urban Alchemy denied the claims in a legal response, arguing that Portillo did not complain and that its other employees “acted reasonably, in good faith, and in a manner consistent with the necessities of their business.”

Looking back today, Portillo pauses when she thinks about what to call Urban Alchemy.

“I would just say it’s a gang,” she said. “Literally that’s how I felt. There’s a lot of tension.”

Tyler of Urban Alchemy said, “Every large organization deals with some HR issues. When these issues arise, we take them seriously, and we do our best to handle them fairly.”

Portillo settled her lawsuit with Urban Alchemy; the terms are confidential.

A deadly response

Three hours inland in Fresno, a different type of reckoning over homelessness and private security is playing out — over what happens in extreme cases, when clashes with armed guards turn deadly.

In March 2021, a Fresno man with a history of mental illness named Joseph Gutierrez was shot to death after a struggle with a 21-year-old guard outside a vacant building. The guard in the case was not hired by a city or a shelter, but by nearby businesses to patrol the area.

Surveillance video shows that the guard employed by Fresno County Private Security lightly kicked a sleeping Gutierrez’s feet and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Once awakened, an unarmed Gutierrez got up and lunged for the guard’s neck. The guard shot four times at close range. A fifth shot hit a bystander in a parking lot, who survived.

No criminal charges were brought against the guard. Gutierrez’s widow recently agreed to an undisclosed settlement in a civil wrongful death lawsuit brought against the security company. The company didn’t admit responsibility in the settlement, and Simpson, the owner, emphasized that the shooting was in self-defense.

“You’re going to have the Monday quarterbacks — ‘Why didn’t he do this?’ ‘Why didn’t he do that?’” Simpson said. “Until you’re in the moment, you can’t quarterback that.”

A dentistry office off the main road of Shaw in central Fresno on Feb. 5, 2024. The business used to be a vacant building and the scene where Joseph Gutierrez was shot and killed by a security guard while seeking shelter in the entryway of the building.

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Larry Valenzuela

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It’s not the only recent guard controversy in Fresno. Last year, another private security contractor was removed from local homeless shelters after the Fresno Bee reported on guards’ pepper “spray first, ask questions later” policy.

“I’m not surprised that this is a mounting problem with the growing number of homeless folks out there,” said Butch Wagner, the attorney who represented Gutierrez’s widow and children. “These security people have no idea what the hell they’re doing.” 

The guard in the Gutierrez case took additional courses at a local community college, and work logs filed in the case show that he came into contact with homeless people often: asking “three vagrants” to leave a Family Dollar store, removing a man from the Little Caesar’s Pizza dumpster, moving along people sleeping in bushes and alleys all along his route — “no use of force required,” he often wrote in the logs.

Wagner, who has also filed suit against police officers accused of shooting homeless people, is most concerned about rules governing when guards are armed.

State law requires that private guards who want to carry a gun apply for a permit and pass a test with the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services demonstrating that they are “capable of exercising appropriate judgment, restraint, and self-control.”

Simpson said it’s up to his guards whether they want to be armed, and also whether a client requests it. He estimates less than 5% of his Fresno County Private Security guards are armed.

“It is your choice. You want to be armed, you can be armed,” Simpson said of his policy. “But you will use a company firearm.”

Had he lived to tell about it, Gutierrez, 35, would have been more qualified than most to weigh in on the debate about where his home state should go from here on homelessness and security.

Before he was killed outside an empty building with 19 cents in his pocket, he’d been a guard, too.

Have you stayed at a California homeless shelter? Tell us about your experience here. 

This coverage was made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation.

Spectators in L.A. this summer for the World Cup could pay up to $209,000 for a private suite for just one match, but union workers at SoFi Stadium are worried they'll miss out on the action.

Bartenders, cooks, dishwashers and servers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have staffed the events held at the stadium since it opened, from the 2022 Super Bowl and NFL games every fall to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts. That includes positions in suites, where fans can pay top dollar for private rooms, food and drink.

But FIFA has brought in another entity entirely to run its luxury program for World Cup fans. The company, called On Location, is FIFA's official "hospitality partner," offering those that can afford it exclusive seating, special gifts and meals. Their packages can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more.

Luxury suites for fans attending the World Cup at SoFi Stadium cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Workers at SoFi say they're worried that FIFA's relationship with On Location means jobs that would typically go to union workers — and the wages and tips that go with them — will instead go to subcontractors without union protections. It's one reason they're threatening to strike when the World Cup comes to town.

 "We have so many wonderful workers who've been here season after season," said Kay Blake, a bartender from Inglewood who works at SoFi Stadium. "I don't see why they would partner with someone else to bring an experience that we can bring ourselves."

Workers also want to be paid a higher rate that reflects the sky-high ticket prices for the eight World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium. They're asking for double pay for major events including the tournament — an arrangement that the food service workers at Dodger Stadium have for the World Series, according to Unite Here.

"We're trying to ensure that there is no disparity between the profits of the company as opposed to our labor," Blake said. "We don't want to be exploited."

How does the World Cup affect labor negotiations?

Unite Here Local 11 represents around 2,000 workers at SoFi, and they're currently negotiating a new contract with Legends Global, the company that runs the stadium's bars and food services. Their old contract expired last year.

The union is leveraging its role in the coming World Cup to push for higher wages, especially at mega-events. Its workers also want protections from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, after the agency's head said that ICE will play a key role in security for the tournament. Unite Here filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, saying ICE's planned presence at the World Cup threatened the union's ability to collectively bargain.

But the battle over subcontracting could also lead workers to the picket line. The union says the use of subcontractors will determine who will benefit from the riches that FIFA brings to Inglewood.

"Subcontracting is supposed to be rare," Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen told LAist. "So in this contract, we're saying no more. It needs to end and especially needs to end at the World Cup because we want those jobs to be good jobs."

How common is subcontracting?

Petersen said the World Cup isn't the only event where jobs have been threatened. He said that union members lost out on more than 100,000 hours of work in 2025 that was instead given to subcontracted workers.

Kay Blake, the bartender, offered LAist an example: an external company paying to operate a suite or two for an event at SoFi.

"If you bring in a subcontractor, they're going to want to bring in their people," she said. "Let's say that this subcontractor usually buys one to two suites… We have a group of people called suite attendants, and so now there's one to two suites less from their workload."

Blake said that she and her co-workers are scheduled by seniority, and fewer suites could mean people work fewer hours. She also said more short-term workers at the stadium for the World Cup could dilute tips for the workers who are at SoFi year-round.

A spokesperson for Legends Global declined to comment on ongoing negotiations with Unite Here Local 11. A representative for Hollywood Park, the site of SoFi Stadium owned by Stanley Kroenke, deferred to Legends Global. FIFA also did not respond to emails requesting comment on the ongoing negotiations.

Luxury packages are the new normal

The dispute between SoFi workers and their employer comes as high ticket prices for the World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games face scrutiny and mega-event organizers emphasize luxury experiences for the very wealthy.

On Location is also the hospitality partner for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The company supplied the same service in Paris in 2024 — the first time the Olympics had such an official luxury service, according to the New York Times.

"The higher end can run well into the tens of thousands of euros: bespoke multiday all-inclusive packages that might include stays in five-star hotels, meals cooked by Michelin-starred chefs, seamless car service between venues and the best seats at the most in-demand events," a Times reporter described in the summer of 2024.

LAist reached out to On Location via email, requesting an interview on the services they provide and their workforce. The company didn't respond.

Isaac Martinez, a cook at SoFi Stadium who lives in Inglewood, said he's still waiting to learn what his schedule will be for the World Cup and he's worried about his hours.

Martinez told LAist that since World Cup prices are so high, he and his co-workers should get a slice of the pie.

"The people that are able to afford those tickets and those suites, they're not people like us," Martinez said through an interpreter. "They're not the people that are gonna make the food or make the experience."

The World Cup kicks off in Los Angeles on June 12 with the first U.S. men's match against Paraguay. If there's no resolution to negotiations, attendees could arrive to a picket line.

State regulators voted Thursday to stop Southern California Gas Co. from charging customers to help pay for planning miles of pipelines that would bring hydrogen gas to the L.A. Basin.

The company says the project would reduce the region’s reliance on methane gas.

Southern California Gas estimates it would cost about $266 million to study and plan the project — called Angeles Link — and asked the state Public Utilities Commission to allow it to recover those costs through customer rates. The company had proposed a monthly increase of $0.35 on the average residential customer bill over the course of three years.

The commission unanimously rejected the request, saying the company had not proved any direct benefit to customers. The decision effectively halts the project for now, and comes amid a stall in federal funding for hydrogen projects under the Trump administration.

Local environmental groups involved in the community advisory process had also grown frustrated by negotiations that they said, in a letter to state regulators, “does not prioritize genuine community engagement.”

As global pollution levels continue to climb, the commission’s decision also highlights the growing challenge of transitioning to a cleaner energy supply amid rising utility bills and open questions about the safety and true environmental cost of largely untested technology.

Why hydrogen?

Hydrogen is a colorless gas that is considered "clean" because it doesn’t involve carbon, which — when burned to create energy — becomes carbon dioxide, a major planet-heating gas.

But it takes energy to produce hydrogen, and most hydrogen these days is created by burning fossil fuels. “Green” hydrogen is created by using clean energy sources like solar and wind to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

SoCal Gas said the Angeles Link project would prioritize green hydrogen.

Most experts see green hydrogen as an important clean-burning fuel for hard-to-electrify industries, such as long-haul trucking and gas-fired power generation. The city of Los Angeles, for example, wants to retrofit its Scattergood Power Plant near El Segundo to burn hydrogen instead of methane gas to generate electricity.

There are many open questions about how safe the highly-combustible gas is for proposed uses and how much water it will require to make. At the same time, extracting and burning fossil fuels for electricity and fuel also takes water — a growing problem as climate change drives longer and hotter droughts.

Experts say, if done right, hydrogen can reduce that water intake and not have a major impact on water supplies.

Also, burning hydrogen could actually worsen local, lung-damaging nitrogen-oxide air pollution, at least with the technology as it currently stands, according to energy researchers.

Reactions to the decision

SoCal Gas will now have to turn to shareholders or other sources of funding if the company wants to proceed. The company did not directly answer LAist’s questions about whether it would.

“We continue to believe that hydrogen—including clean renewable hydrogen—can help advance California’s energy and climate goals while supporting the long‑term affordability, security and reliability of energy service for customers,” SoCal Gas spokesperson Brian Haas wrote in an email to LAist.

Environmental groups celebrated the vote, while emphasizing they see green hydrogen playing a role in the state’s future.

“Residential customers should not subsidize speculative infrastructure for large industrial users,” said Michael Colvin, director of the California Energy Program at Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement.

“We look forward to working with regulators, utilities and large customers to build a credible, cost-effective strategy to cut climate pollution from sectors that are hardest to electrify,” the statement read.

Global events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics are sure to draw thousands of new visitors wanting to get to know Los Angeles.

L.A. has a lot to offer, including its vast and varied portfolio of public art. It’s even been referred to as the mural capital of the world. So if you want to explore some of the city’s art, here are a few murals you won’t want to miss.

Sports 

“LA Rising” at the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo celebrates the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, depicting him in his two roles — hitter and pitcher.
- Where to find it: 328 First St., Los Angeles

“Blue Heaven on Earth” is a love letter to the Dodgers, depicting both Shohei Ohtani and the late Fernando Venezuela.
- Where to find it: 1647 Blake Ave., Los Angeles

A mural honoring Winter Olympics Gold Medalist Alysa Liu in Gardena.

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California native and Olympian Alysa Liu captured the world’s attention with her figure skating in the Winter Olympics. This mural in Gardena celebrates her win.
- Where to find it: 15532 Crenshaw Blvd., Gardena

A mural of L.A. Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna can be found outside Hardcore Fitness L.A.

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“City of Angels!” pays tribute to Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gigi.
- Where to find it: 400 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles

Music

Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse and Selena are memorialized on this Hollywood mural.
- Where to find it: 7677 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 

“Jazz on the field” is an ode to Wrigley Field and the Dunbar Hotel in South L.A. and depicts jazz icons Louis Armstrong and Etta James, as well as Martin Luther King Jr.
- Where to find it: 43rd St. and Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When Kendrick Lamar featured Tam’s Burgers in his “Not Like Us” music video, the burger spot in Compton commissioned a mural highlighting the rapper’s unforgettable single.
- Where to find it: 1201 Rosecrans Ave, Compton

Historic to LA

A section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, designed by muralist Judy Baca, that showcases pivotal moments in Los Angeles History.

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“The Great Wall of Los Angeles” is one of the largest murals in the world, and it’s supposed to get bigger. The half-mile art piece depicts California’s rich history.
- Where to find it: Along the L.A. River in the San Fernando Valley, on Coldwater Canyon Avenue between Burbank Boulevard and Oxnard Street. 

“The Blessing of the Animals” at La Placita Olvera depicts the Catholic tradition of blessing one’s animals.
- Where to find it: 115 Paseo De La Plaza, Los Angeles

“El Grito” depicts a scene that sparked Mexican independence from Spanish rule.
- Where to find it: Placita de Dolores at 831 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles

When you take a bite of the lomo saltado burrito from Merka Saltao, a fast-casual Peruvian restaurant in Culver City, one of the first things you'll notice is the sauce.

The wok-fried chunks of steak, dressed in a soy-and-oyster sauce reduction spiked with vinegar, saturate the rice inside the tortilla, highlighting the sweet heat of ají amarillo mixed with the velvety texture of pinto beans.

It's a beautiful confluence of flavors. It is also, depending on who you ask, either a creative act of evolution or a betrayal of Peruvian culinary heritage.

Standing on business

The lomo saltado burrito at Merka Saltao wasn't exactly a calculated move. Lifelong friends Alonso Franco and Ignacio Barrios — who met in high school in Lima — came to Los Angeles to bring Peruvian food to the masses, first through a ghost kitchen concept they ran from 2021 to 2023. The burrito happened almost by accident: a member of their kitchen team brought in a tortilla one day, someone suggested wrapping the lomo saltado in it, they ate it, and within three days, it was on the menu.

Merka Saltao co-founders Ignacio Barrios, left, and Alonso Franco, right, inside their Culver City restaurant. The two lifelong friends from Lima opened the fast-casual brick-and-mortar location for their Peruvian concept in August 2025.

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Courtesy Merka Saltao

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The data from the ghost kitchen made the case for keeping it there. Franco and Barrios had launched with around 140 dishes — lomo saltado, ceviche, chicken dishes, the works. But the numbers kept pointing to the same thing: wherever lomo saltado appeared on the menu, in whatever form, burrito, bowl, salad, it was the winner.

(Ceviche, for all its cultural cachet, is raw fish with raw onion — a harder sell for a weekday lunch. Lomo saltado, Franco noted, is steak and fries — basically a hamburger.)

The backlash

The two friends made the leap to brick-and-mortar in August 2025, opening Merka Saltao in downtown Culver City. It's one of the more competitive dining corridors in L.A., the kind of block that can support a $16 wellness bowl and a craft beer bar in the same stretch, populated by Amazon employees on lunch breaks, families on weekend outings, and food-literate regulars who will absolutely have opinions about what goes in a burrito.

Those opinions arrived faster than Franco expected. Within the first week of opening, an influencer came in and posted about the restaurant — but instead of showing the full menu, the bowls, the chicha morada, the flexibility of the concept, they showed the burrito. Just the burrito.

Franco working the wok at Merka Saltao. The high-heat wok technique at the heart of lomo saltado traces its roots to Chinese immigrants in Peru

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Christopher Mortenson

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Courtesy Merka Saltao

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The comments turned quickly. "No! Peruvians don't eat burritos. ¿Qué car—o es eso?" — roughly, "what the hell is this?" — wrote one commenter. Another said "Burritos? We don't eat burritos in 🇵🇪”. Franco describes sitting at his computer reading the pile-on, feeling something between anger and devastation. "There was a moment where I probably even cried," he said, "thinking, I've made a mistake." But then he looked at the numbers. 30,000 had seen the post…. And half the comments were in his defense.

He took the conversation to Reddit, posting to r/FoodLosAngeles asking the community directly: am I wrong for this? The response was overwhelming — hundreds of comments, almost entirely in his favor, and a surge of new customers walking through the door shortly after.

Fusion by default

This is Los Angeles, where many of the dishes that define the Southern California diet were born precisely from cultures colliding. Roy Choi built an empire on Korean tacos. Al pastor traces its technique to Lebanese immigrants who brought the vertical spit. The California roll, invented by Japanese chefs in Los Angeles in the 1960s, introduced an entire country to sushi. None of these dishes destroyed the traditions they borrowed from. If anything, they expanded their audience. And the lomo saltado burrito isn't exactly a novel concept in Southern California to begin with — everyone from Pablitos Tacos in North Hollywood to Le Hut in Santa Ana, run by 2025 James Beard Award-nominated chef Daniel Castillo, has featured their own version. Even Disney's California Adventure got in on it, serving a lomo saltado burrito out of the Studio Catering Co. food truck as recently as last year.

The lomo saltado bowl and burrito at Merka Saltao in Culver City — two versions of the same dish that sparked an unlikely online debate about Peruvian culinary identity.

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Courtesy Merka Saltao

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Franco would also point out that lomo saltado itself — the dish the purists are so eager to protect — is a product of Chinese immigrants bringing the wok and soy sauce to Peru roughly 300 years ago. "Peruvian is by default fusion," he told me. "So we have all the right to wrap it up in a burrito." What the online critics were really doing, whether they knew it or not, was defending a dish that was itself once considered inauthentic — and doing so in the name of authenticity.

Where things stand

Since the backlash, Franco says business has been mostly steady — breaking even, which for a concept that requires high volume at a low price point, he considers a good sign. The controversy changed things in ways he didn't expect: people started coming in specifically because of the story, not just the food. He began putting himself front and center in the brand, regularly making videos on social media about what it's like to run the business, occasionally poking fun at himself and the whole debate. When we visited during the weekday lunch rush, there was a steady line of people waiting to order, many stopping to talk with Franco directly.

In a way, he's answered the authenticity question not with an argument but with a presence — showing up, telling the story, letting the food speak. "Honoring my food, if that requires pairing lomo saltado with a salad or wrapping it in a tortilla, I have no problem," he said. "I'm not being less authentic. We are evolving in Peru anytime. I have to be authentic on the individual flavor and then be flexible to reach more people to discover our flavors."

The burrito, it turns out, was never the point. It was just the door.