Lutheran Social Services of Nevada mismanaged contract, ex-employee claims

Lutheran Social Services of Nevada obtained a $10 million federal contract in August 2024 to provide support services to the 235 households relocating from Marble Manor, a low-income public housing complex slated to be razed and rebuilt.

A year later, after paying the nonprofit almost $600,000 in taxpayer funds, the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority quietly terminated what was to have been a nine-year contract.

The public housing agency cited “convenience” as the reason. The CEO of the nonprofit said it “absolutely” was meeting the contract terms.

But a former Marble Manor program director claims that the nonprofit mismanaged the grant. After the nonprofit fired the director, the Housing Authority began to question certain expenses and note missed deadlines, its emails to the nonprofit show.

Hired in October of last year by Lutheran Social Services, program director Natasha Samuel said she was fired this June after refusing to add the nonprofit’s administrative assistant to her team on a full-time basis, a grant expense the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had not approved.

The program was struggling from the moment she came on board, Samuel said. Her small team at first worked without computers or desks until the Housing Authority fronted money for office equipment and furniture.

“We had minimal supplies. I had minimal staff. It was very hard,” said Samuel, who by the time she left had a team of seven people. “We did the best we could. We met our deliverables for the HUD grant, but it was always with one hand behind our back.”

Tim Bedwell, the nonprofit’s CEO, denied Samuel’s claims of mismanagement.

“The oversight on HUD grants is rigorous, and it was managed by SNRHA,” Bedwell wrote in an email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Funds also were monitored by the nonprofit’s finance office, its chief operating officer and himself, he wrote.

Though Bedwell gave an interview to the Review-Journal in October in which he answered some questions about the program, he declined to be interviewed for this story.

Citing the federal government shutdown, Lutheran Social Services in October suspended its operations, including a food pantry for low-income people and sit-down meals for seniors. Its website states that it continues to accept applications for holiday assistance. It remains uncertain when operations will fully resume.

The nonprofit is loosely affiliated with the Lutheran Church, which does not directly oversee its operations, though pastors are among its board members.

‘Take them and make this work’

Lutheran Social Services of Nevada was the only agency to bid on the $10 million contract, part of $50 million in HUD funding awarded under the Choice Neighborhood Initiative to revitalize the 70-year-old Marble Manor property and the surrounding neighborhood near Martin Luther King Boulevard and Washington Avenue. The single-story units are being leveled in phases and residents relocated either temporarily during rebuilding or permanently.

The HUD contract required Lutheran Social Services to conduct in-depth assessments of Marble Manor households to assist them with relocating and with finding job training and employment, education programs, health care providers and fresh food, among other things.

Samuel came on the job after the resignations of several of the nonprofit’s board members and key managers. Some cited payments to Bedwell’s wife and her business partner as among their reasons for resigning, the Review-Journal previously reported.

The former program director said that when she first tried to hire trained social workers, Bedwell required her to instead take onto her team two existing employees whom she described as inexperienced.

“You’re going to take them and make this work,” Samuel said Bedwell told her.

Bedwell denied the claim, writing in an email that any employee transferred to Marble Manor was “fully qualified and experienced in social services.”

The grant required that the nonprofit submit invoices for reimbursement after expenses had been incurred. But Samuel said the nonprofit did not have the funds to cover costs up front. The organization reported $5.1 million in revenue for the fiscal year that ended in June 2024.

Emails between the Housing Authority and the nonprofit show friction between the agencies over reimbursements. The emails and other documents were obtained by the Review-Journal through public records requests to the Housing Authority.

In early December of last year, the Housing Authority’s Karen Schnog wrote in an email to Bedwell, Linda Downey — Bedwell’s sister-in-law, who managed the nonprofit’s finances — and Samuel that the housing agency was awaiting complete invoices for expenses incurred since the grant was awarded.

“We encourage you to provide this as soon as possible, as we do not plan on processing any more payments as advances,” wrote Schnog, director of the Choice Neighborhood Initiative.

Later that month, Bedwell wrote to Schnog and Housing Authority representatives that the nonprofit had “an immediate critical need for reimbursement.”

He stressed that the organization had funded $70,000 in salaries and equipment for the Marble Manor program.

“This means money and staff hours were taken from other programs, administrative needs, and services,” he wrote. “So, the pending reimbursement won’t go to MM (Marble Manor). It will go to maintain our basic … operations.”

‘Completely overwhelmed’

At this point, the nonprofit was focused almost exclusively on Marble Manor to the detriment of other services, said former employee Mary La Barbera.

La Barbera, who previously worked as a church office manager, started in February 2024 as the manager of the SNAP-Education program for federal food recipients, a job she loved but for which she said she received “absolutely no training.” When the grant for the nutritional and physical education program was not renewed, she was shifted to other positions.

Meanwhile, in 2024 the staff shrank from 33 employees to 13, said Bedwell, a retired North Las Vegas police lieutenant who began as CEO in January of that year.

La Barbera said she was told last December that she would be handling all social services for clients at the nonprofit’s headquarters on Boulder Highway, such as paying their rent and utility bills. When she joined the organization, it had six case workers; now she would be the only one, a job for which she had no experience, she said.

“I did not receive a list of clients,” she said. “I had no idea what software they used to track their clients or what reporting was due to who and when. I was completely overwhelmed.”

La Barbera submitted her resignation in January.

“I am not qualified to be a case worker,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “And I am also disappointed in the lack of training I have received to accomplish this job effectively. I also feel it is a great injustice to the people that come to LSSN for help. They deserve the best people and service we can offer them.”

Payments to CEO’s wife

As the nonprofit reduced its staff, it continued to pay $8,500 monthly to Bedwell’s wife, Michele, for marketing services through her company Hi-Tek Media, and another $8,500 for consulting services to her business partner Adam Kent’s business Invictus Consulting, payment records for 2024 show. Tim Bedwell named Kent his chief of staff in July 2024 and promoted him to COO this year.

Michele Bedwell’s marketing business has had legal trouble in the past. Her company Diversity Marketing filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in September 2016, federal court records show. Creditors included CBS Radio, doing business at KXNT.

Earlier that year, CBS Radio had sued her, alleging nonpayment of more than $26,000 for advertising radio time, Clark County District Court records show. Michele Bedwell told the court that clients hadn’t paid her, and unsuccessfully argued that she did not have a valid contract with the station. An arbitrator awarded CBS $18,000, court records show.

Harry Jacobs, a former client, described Michele Bedwell as charming and smart.

“In the beginning, she did good by my company,” he said.

But later, thousands of dollars he paid her for radio airtime was not being turned over to the radio stations, he claimed.

He provided his canceled checks to Diversity Marketing to the arbitrator in the CBS lawsuit and to the bankruptcy trustee, he said.

In November, Michele Bedwell told the Review-Journal that she continued to work for the nonprofit but had been paid only $2,500 in the past five months. She did not respond to a request this month for comment on the legal issues.

‘Trust can be lost quickly’

Samuel said the nonprofit could not make good on a commitment to provide food on a monthly basis to Marble Manor residents, which led to the team turning to other community food pantries, such as Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, she said.

Tim Bedwell denied the claim, saying that Lutheran Social Services “had ample pantry services to assist MM residents throughout our participation in the program.” Staff members routinely picked up food from the pantry to deliver to residents at the housing development, he wrote in his email.

But La Barbera said Samuel “was always asking — pleading — for food to be handed out to Marble Manor residents. And there just wasn’t enough food to give them.”

Funding from other grants was drying up, both women said, which resulted in remaining employees being moved to the Marble Manor program.

“When they (Lutheran Social Services of Nevada) ran out of money, they started trying to put different people under the HUD grant,” Samuel said.

The issue came to a head when Tim Bedwell demanded that the full salary of an administrative assistant be paid under the grant, which only authorized 20 hours per week, Samuel claimed.

“He was, like, you need to figure it out,” Samuel said.

She refused, and was fired a week later, she said.

Tim Bedwell claimed that Samuel’s firing had nothing to do with the administrative assistant, and that there was never a request that the half-time position be filled full time. He also said the nonprofit does not comment on the reason for an employee’s termination, and that Samuel was not given a reason for hers.

La Barbera described Samuel as “constantly pushing for her grant and to make LSSN live up to the grant expectations.”

After Samuel’s firing on June 2, the Housing Authority’s Schnog asked the nonprofit to explain why it had charged more hours to the grant for the administrative assistant than had been allotted, saying that the hours would have to be deducted in the future, an email shows.

Following the firing, Schnog also requested that the nonprofit provide a formal transition plan, including an explanation of how the budget would absorb expenses not budgeted for, such as payroll taxes, mileage and cellphone expenses. She wrote that an initial plan did not address points she had told Kent, the COO, to include, such as ensuring continuity of operations and providing summer programming for students.

“We work very hard with every interaction to build trust with the community,” Schnog wrote. “This trust can be lost quickly without continuity.”

After a deadline was missed, she continued to request in subsequent emails that the formal plan be submitted.

Later in June, Schnog emailed that she would have to reject the nonprofit’s payroll invoice because it had overpaid another employee.

In both June and July, the Housing Authority requested documentation from the nonprofit that it was meeting cybersecurity protocols, citing a July 31 deadline. On Aug. 19, the Housing Authority again inquired about the status of the cybersecurity plan.

Termination letter

In its monthly report to the Housing Authority for August, the nonprofit touted successes such as an increase in case management, with ongoing communication with 113 households, roughly half of the Marble Manor residences.

It stated it had distributed 25 bus passes and made 22 referrals for services that month. Its education specialist supported six households, while its workforce specialist supported seven households, according to the report. Twenty-four households received “food support.”

The nonprofit had co-hosted with the Housing Authority what it described as a “highly successful” back-to-school event with nearly 100 Marble Manor youth.

“With new staff transitions and upcoming assessments, LSSN is well-positioned to address evolving community needs this fall,” the report stated.

But next, in a letter dated Sept. 2, Lewis Jordan, the Housing Authority’s executive director, formally notified Tim Bedwell of the contract’s termination for convenience, effective Sept. 30.

Las Vegas City Councilwoman Nancy Brune, chair of the Housing Authority’s board, deferred comment on the contract’s termination to Jordan. Jordan did not respond to requests for comment. A law firm representing the Housing Authority said the agency had no comment.

Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom, who is a member of the Housing Authority’s board, said authority staff told him in a briefing that the termination of the contract was not due to performance issues. He also was told that the termination was not political in nature.

The $50 million in HUD funding for the overall revitalization of the housing development and surrounding neighborhood is not in jeopardy, he said. The Housing Authority itself would be providing case management for the Marble Manor residents, he said.

When asked in early October what social services her household had received so far, Marble Manor resident Unique Parker replied, “Honestly, none.”

She’d seen a van handing out food at times that she described as random. There also were block parties for residents, said Parker, 26, who on this sunny afternoon was sitting outside the unit where she lives with her mother and siblings.

Her family had received paperwork with a 2027 moving date. She doesn’t plan on sticking around until then.

“My mom will probably still be here, but not me,” she said.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on X. Hynes is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.