A local nonprofit that runs homeless shelters and safety-net programs filed a lawsuit against Long Beach last week, alleging it nearly had to shut down its operations across Los Angeles County after the city refused to pay for $1.1 million of work it performed.
It’s the latest escalation in a dispute between the April Parker Foundation and Long Beach’s homeless services bureau that’s been simmering behind the scenes for nearly a year.
Long Beach contracted the foundation for years to run violence intervention and youth coaching programs, a rapid rehousing service, and even selected it in 2023 to run its new youth shelter. But the city began withholding payments for at least some of that work as early as late 2024, the lawsuit alleges.
The foundations’ billing “was not consistent with their contractual requirements, and the supporting documentation wasn’t provided to substantiate all the amounts on the invoices,” Deputy City Attorney Nick Masero previously told the Long Beach Post. (The city attorney’s office declined to talk about the lawsuit Wednesday, saying it does not comment on active litigation.)
By October, the city had decided not to renew any contracts with the foundation, shortly after it conducted a “routine program monitoring” of a contract in early August, according to the lawsuit.
Masero said the city was still willing to pay invoices for any completed work as long as the foundation submitted the correct paperwork. The city, for instance, paid the principal balance for one of four outstanding contracts, $135,744 for the youth programming, after months of delays.
And as recently as Tuesday, a city worker was asking the nonprofit to fix “date and invoice number inconsistencies” on other languishing invoices, according to emails reviewed by the Long Beach Post.
He wrote that he wasn’t sure why they weren’t paid originally, but “if these invoice issues were simple typos and could be fixed, I want to resubmit these as soon as you can revise and send them to me.”
April Parker, who runs the April Parker Foundation, said she has sent over hundreds of documents and receipts detailing every transaction tied to the program and alleges the city is manufacturing excuses not to pay her. Typos and clerical errors could have been easily fixed with clarifying questions instead of nonpayment, she wrote in an email to the city.
The financial dispute, she says, has crippled her nonprofit, forcing it to cut its youth shelter staff, reduce its administrative team and close its 36-bed transitional shelter. Parker said she had to take out a line of credit and stop paying herself a salary to save her organization.
This marks the second time in recent months that the city has distanced itself from a homelessness services contractor over billing concerns. The city in April abruptly cut ties with First to Serve, which ran several of its homeless shelters, after a long-running audit of the homeless services bureau found issues with the nonprofit’s billing practices.
Parker said she was informed her organization was included in the audit, but — despite her repeated texts and calls to city health officials — says she was never told if it found any problems.