Eight months since it was supposed to open, Long Beach’s new youth homeless shelter is still empty, plagued by plumbing problems and a long-running legal conflict that’s just now being made public. The nonprofit originally selected to run the shelter says it’s on the verge of suing the city for pulling the plug on its contract and withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments that have left it on the brink of collapse.
It’s a dispute that has been unfolding for nearly a year, between the city and the nonprofit April Parker Foundation. But at the shelter’s premature grand opening in August, all seemed well.
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson cut the ceremonial ribbon in front of a small crowd, including about 30 foundation employees.
The foundation, by this point, had been a local city contractor for years, doing youth intervention and homelessness work. It was poised to run the new shelter under a $500,000 contract the City Council unanimously approved in May.
The shelter had a dozen beds, meant for young adults at transitional age, who had recently exited the foster care system or juvenile justice and needed special help, like counseling, financial management, a schedule and a place to sleep. But that work never started.
In late October, the city says, it notified the April Parker Foundation that it wouldn’t be signing with them because of concerns about how the foundation billed for some of its prior work.
Since 2023, Long Beach had contracted the foundation to provide rapid rehousing services for homeless people. Then last summer, it stopped paying them. Officials later explained that invoices were coming in late, inadequately filled out or missing required documentation to justify the expense.
“We’re not making any accusations of fraud or even breach of contract,” Deputy City Attorney Nick Masero said, but the timing of the invoices “was not consistent with their contractual requirements, and the supporting documentation wasn’t provided to substantiate all the amounts on the invoices.”
Masero said the city has sought to resolve the issue with the April Parker Foundation, but added that “we’re not obligated under the contract to make payment until they’ve provided all the necessary information and documentation.”
April Parker, founder of the April Parker Foundation, alleges the city is manufacturing an excuse not to pay her. She said she has sent over hundreds of documents and receipts detailing every transaction tied to the program.
“We delivered binders to them, binders that contain 100% documentation on every invoice, every transaction, everything,” she said.
After providing those, Parker said communication with the city largely stopped, save for some correspondence through her attorneys. She remains unsure of what the city thinks her staff did wrong.
It’s the second time recently that Long Beach has cut off a homelessness contractor over billing concerns, as a long-running audit of the city’s homelessness programs inches closer to being finished. Parker said she was informed about the audit, but — despite her repeated texts and calls to city health officials — was never told if it found any problems within her organization.
Parker said she was blindsided by the city withholding payments across all its contracts with her, some as early as March 2025, as she was ramping up to run the new youth shelter.
“I do not know what is wrong with anything I’ve ever submitted because they’ve never told me what’s actually wrong, nothing,” Parker said. “So how can I fix something that I don’t even know what’s wrong? I gave them everything, and they’ve never come back and said, ‘Well, this is wrong, or that is wrong.’”
On the city’s assurance that she would be running the shelter, she said, she hired staff, rewrote policies, updated insurance and hosted an open house at the facility. The foundation was even invited to the ribbon ceremony.
Then, in a reversal, she said, the city told her they planned to “take the shelter in-house.” Without any written notice or further explanation, city officials, she said, assumed control of the shelter and denied access to her staff.
Parker has since filed multiple legal claims against the city, alleging they improperly withheld payments for her nonprofit’s work on the youth shelter, rapid rehousing and gun violence intervention. They say the city owes Parker more than $1 million.
She said those costs have 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.
Her next step may be to sue. The city has denied the legal claims and sought to reopen the youth shelter with a new operator.
At a City Council meeting this week, Homeless Services Bureau Manager Paul Duncan blamed the delayed opening on faulty plumbing. In December, months after the decision to kick out the April Parker Foundation, crews discovered cracked, clogged and faulty underground pipes that were causing toilets to back up.
Renovations, which are under warranty, Duncan said, are expected to conclude soon. When the shelter opens next month, it will be run by Jovenes, Inc., an LA-based nonprofit. The City Council approved a one-year contract with the organization at its meeting Tuesday.
“Glad to hear we have a real opening date in early May, and I look forward to moving forward,” Mayor Rex Richardson said after the vote.
The April Parker Foundation’s name was not mentioned.