The Brief

Khloe Rios-Wyatt broke new ground nearly five years ago when she co-founded Alianza Translatinx, the first trans-led organization in Orange County that's dedicated to helping transgender people with resources relating to housing, mental health support, immigration and other services.

Recently, LAist asked her to tell us about the organization, its goals, and a report it released this summer on the current challenges facing the LGBTQIA+ community in Orange County, including housing injustice.

How it all began

Even at the age of 5, Khloe Rios-Wyatt knew that she didn’t identify with the gender she was assigned at birth and would tell her parents she was a girl. The response? Love and acceptance.

That love and acceptance helped her become the first person in her family to head off to college, Cal State Fullerton

She said she suffered some bullying from classmates there, but it wasn’t until entering the workforce that she realized how hard life could be for someone who is transgender. Four months after Rios-Wyatt started working at a marketing agency in Newport Beach, she says she lost the job when her employer cited discrepancies in her employment documentation compared to her driver’s license, Social Security and immigration documents — which all carried her dead name. To compound matters, she was also a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) permit holder at the time. To change all these documents and address her immigration status would have required the costly services of an attorney.

When she hit rock bottom

Rios-Wyatt says she plummeted into depression. Unemployed, she didn’t know where to turn to for help. Her mission now is to make sure others have a support system for some of the challenges she faced.

“At the time I was not informed,” she said. “I didn't have the knowledge that I have now.”

Rios-Wyatt would eventually begin working at a nonprofit in Los Angeles with other trans people, an experience that made her realize she was not the only one confronted with barriers to finding work, especially when immigration issues are also involved. And so, at the beginning of the pandemic, she began the grassroots effort to co-found Alianza Translatinx, the first trans-led organization in Orange County.

A mission is born

Alianza — “alliance” in Spanish — acts as a hub connecting people in Orange County's trans community with resources relating to housing, mental health support, immigration assistance and other services.

“I just wanted to be of more value going into my community and educating them, helping them update their documents, and making sure that they didn't go through the same thing that I went through,” Rios-Wyatt said.

Part of that mission is figuring out what people need.

That led to a first-of-its-kind reports by Alianza Translatinx, which made headlines with its survey of the trans community revealing the unique challenges they face and the lack of targeted resources. The results in the report titled "We Deserve Housing Justice" revealed that 44% of respondents in Orange County said they struggled to make a living, earning less than $10,000 annually. And over 60% of them said they had experienced discrimination based on their gender.

This discrimination, they say, is their biggest barrier to higher paying jobs, which makes it harder to find secure housing.

“We want this report to help inform other housing providers in the area how to better provide services, housing services for trans people and really improve the way that services are currently being delivered to transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex people in Orange County,” Rios-Wyatt said.

She added that Alianza Translatinx exists to help people get out of that cycle of despair. One of those who says she has been helped is Lucia Marlene Garcia.

Helping with the basics — such as housing

Garcia arrived from Tijuana two years ago, crossing the border with several friends. She eventually came to Santa Ana, staying at a hotel as she tried to find employment and housing.

She found part-time work at beauty salons and cleaning houses, but she's had trouble finding a full-time job, and only recently got her work visa. Housing has been an even bigger problem. Garcia said she visited around 60 apartments and homes over seven months, searching for an affordable room to rent so she could leave the hotel behind. (She was paying $2,000 a month there, and had to eat out for all of her meals.)

Garcia's lack of credit and job history have been major obstacles to finding a place. But sometimes, she said, the rental seemed like a done deal until she showed up in person. In one case, Garcia went to a house to meet a woman who had advertised a room for rent.

"When I got there, just seeing me and that I was a trans woman, she told me, 'No, I can't rent my room to you because I have little kids.' I mean, what does that have to do with anything?" Garcia recalled. "I felt very offended and very judged."

She is now staying with a friend, and working on becoming a licensed hair stylist while learning English and "getting a little more settled."

Alianza Translatinx connected Garcia with the Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp., which is helping Garcia in her search for permanent housing of her own. Garcia said she also relies on the Civic Center Barrio's food bank.

How services have grown

Alianza Translatinx initially started by preparing and then distributing hot meals to community members during the pandemic, Rios-Wyatt said. But people would also reach out with questions about name changes and where they could find information about medical care and hormone replacement therapy.

“It just became this community chain of passing on information and then more and more people started coming to us to ask for more resources,” Rios-Wyatt said.

Now, the organization works like a hub connecting community members with other organizations in Orange County. Alianza recently partnered with UC Irvine Health to provide medical services, such as hormone replacement therapy and laser hair removal. They have also created partnerships with organizations like CalOptima Health and local nonprofits to provide housing assistance, rental stipends and transportation reimbursements.

Danielle Cameron, a director at CalOptima Health, said Alianza provides "important advocacy for and support to Orange County’s Transgender, gender-diverse and intersex (TGI) community" and noted that "the TGI community faces structural barriers and discrimination when seeking essential health care, housing and accommodations."

"We are in the early stages of our partnership and are committed to the work ahead," Cameron added.

The jobs and housing challenge

In the wake of the survey responses, Rios-Wyatt created a housing case management program at Alianza Translatinx. It helps clients with services like trauma-informed housing management, where an individual’s experience is centered in case management, rent assistance vouchers and mental health access.

“We're speaking to politicians, to community leaders, at the state level and at the local level, to also include trans people in workforce development, to foster leadership and to invest in trans leadership,” Rios-Wyatt said. “We want this report to help inform other housing providers in the area how to better provide services, housing services for trans people and really improve the way that services are currently being delivered to transgender, gender nonconforming and intersex people in Orange County."

The key to making a difference

Rios-Wyatt may be at the helm of the organization, but she says its success is a shared victory.

"We just did the work and everything else just came to be what it is now. It has been a team effort. It hasn't just been me," Rios-Wyatt said. "This was built under my leadership, but I recognize that this was a team effort... Alianza Translatinx has become a cornerstone in the community because it's based in community."

Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of pounds of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

In a letter sent Tuesday to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life.

“Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” Bass wrote.

LAist has asked the Department of Public Health for comment and will update this article when they respond.

The back-and-forth between jurisdictions

Bass wrote that the city of L.A., which does not have its own health department, is largely dependent on L.A. County for control of potentially disease-carrying vectors. The city has said elsewhere that its Sanitation Department did set about 250 rat traps in surrounding areas.

Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold warehouse operator Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering the company to remove flies and mosquitoes from the property.

“Although I appreciate that County DPH has taken this first step, the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property,” Bass’ letter to Ferrer states.

Bass urged the county to compel Lineage to address pests at neighboring properties “with aggressive measures to eliminate the flies and any other vectors.”

As for L.A. County’s Department of Public Health, a spokesperson told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to address the pest situation.

“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requested that both Lineage Logistics and the City of Los Angeles develop and implement a vector/insect control plan,” the statement reads.

Lineage’s part

According to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights on the L.A. City Council and met with Lineage representatives on Monday, an inspector contracted by the company confirmed that the rotting food at the warehouse is serving as a breeding ground for flies. The infestation won’t go away without addressing the root cause, Jurado reported the contractor as saying.

“Removing waste, adding odor-control equipment, and conducting a pest inspection are important,” Jurado said in a statement. “But residents are asking a more fundamental question: Are conditions actually improving? They deserve evidence, timelines and accountability — not just a list of activities.”

Lineage has not yet presented its pest control plan to the public.

A ticking clock

The first day of instruction for L.A. Unified schools is Aug. 12, three days before the city’s current deadline to clear the warehouse — a deadline Lineage does not appear to be on track to meet.

That’s led many teachers and parents to raise the alarm about smells and pests that may very well still be around when school starts. An LAUSD spokesperson told Boyle Heights Beat that it is prepared to temporarily relocate nearby schools, as they did with summer programs during the warehouse fire.

Lineage meets deadline at last minute

Meanwhile, Lineage also faced a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to air quality officials on how to address smells of spoiled food, which have been reported from miles away. A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesperson said that the agency received a response from Lineage at 5 p.m. and is evaluating it.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening