Gabriel Maldonado, CEO and founder of nonprofit TruEvolution, walks through the lobby of the Riverside facility on Wednesday, July 10, 2024. The center offers support and services mainly to the LGBTQ community, but also provides services to the hetrosexual community, and provides a variety of resources, including housing, in a safe place. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
At this rainbow-colored campus in downtown Riverside, everyone is welcome.
A new space, geared towards LGBTQ+ members, has opened in downtown Riverside. The Inland Empire LGBTQ+ Center will provide accessible healthcare, resources and a safe, inclusive space for the region’s diverse residents in the LGBTQ+, immigrant and HIV+ communities, leaders say.
Operated by the non-profit TruEvolution, the center officially opened its doors to the community in June, during Pride Month. It functions as a gateway to resources like free HIV and COVID-19 testing, housing and healthcare resources, counseling, and meeting spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals throughout the Inland region and across Southern California.
The center resides within TruEvolution’s Project Legacy — a transitional housing facility that provides shelter for LGBTQ+, disabled people, youth and elderly community members — located along Riverside’s Brockton Avenue. About 75 to 80% of the beds are reserved for members of the LGBTQ+ community, officials said.
The new LGBTQ+ Center is at the entrance, in a blue building as part of Project Legacy’s multicolored, one-acre campus full of small houses painted different colors of the rainbow.
The walls, lined with inspirational quotes and photos of influential LGBTQ+ and Civil Rights movement leaders, serve as visual reminders of the community’s past and inspiration for its future, organizers said. Underneath are books about LGBTQ+ healthcare and history, countless resource pamphlets to anyone who visits.
Tawny Kompelien, a resident of TruEvolution’s Project Legacy housing, has resided on the new campus for two months. She said she lost her job and previous home after she became paralyzed.
“Luckily this place was here to help me,” Kompelien, 29, said, adding that the program helped her with her health issues, and aids her with day-to-day tasks like laundry.
The space is still in its grand opening phase, currently hosting community and group program events. However, TruEvolution CEO and Founder Gabriel Maldonado said they plan to be open to public foot traffic soon, after figuring out safety logistics.
Maldonado said he also plans to add more comprehensive medical services, as well as a computer lab in the LGBTQ+ Center.
The center’s opening comes on the heels of ongoing school culture war debates and acts across the Inland Empire that some have criticized as harmful to the LGBTQ+ community.
For example, in the Murrieta Valley school district, a policy was passed by the school board last fall requiring parents to be notified if a child identifies as transgender. In April, the district was ordered to stop enforcing the policy by the state Department of Education, after officials found it discriminates against transgender youth. Similar proposals last year were debated — and condemned — in the Chino Valley and Temecula Valley school districts.
Also in Temecula, a social studies curriculum was rejected last year by the board, after some of its members cited its mention of slain gay-rights activist Harvey Milk in supplemental materials. But, after pushback from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and others, the curriculum was approved except for the unit mentioning Milk.
Other examples of “anti-LGBTQ+” acts, critics say — such as a policy that limits solely the American and California state flags to be flown at schools in both Temecula and Chino Valley — are still in on the books.
TruEvolution leaders hope the new center will “support, educate, and advocate for LGBTQ+ individuals living in the Inland Empire and, at the same time, promote health & well-being (by) providing a safe and inclusive community space.”
Inland Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, whose district includes Riverside, secured $3 million in the state’s 2023 – 2024 budget towards the center’s creation and TruEvolution’s LGBTQ+ Legacy Fund, which will go towards future grants, partnerships and basic community needs, officials said. Other donations came from different endowments, private funding and foundations across the state.
Cervantes, who is the first openly LGBTQ+ Latina to serve as Chair of the California Latino Legislative Caucus, said in a news release that she was proud to sponsor a “critical community space, and look forward to seeing its impact in the region.”
“Every person deserves to be seen and to live as their true, authentic selves,” Cervantes said in the release. “I am happy to have delivered results for communities who have been marginalized and long left behind.”
Co-founder Jesse Melgar, who is an advisory board member with Equality California, said the new center “represents a commitment to our future, ensuring that the progress we make today will continue to uplift and empower LGBTQ+ residents in our region for generations to come.
“It is an investment in our collective strength and resilience, and will serve as an important gathering space for members of the community,” Melgar said.
A second TruEvolution-run LGBTQ+ space in Southwest Riverside County is planned for the near future.
Maldonado, who founded the nonprofit during his freshman year at UC Riverside, said he understands “first-hand” where the LGBTQ+ community’s fears and concerns of feeling unwelcome in the Inland Empire come from. He hopes to combat these feelings with the new center.
“We could not only be a bridge for the LGBTQ+ community, we could be a bridge for all of the community… to (not live in) fear in how we live our lives,” Maldonado said. “We are here to strengthen the social fabric, elevate love, expand tolerance, and create a home and space for all these people.”
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