Per the lawsuit, the city claims that the shelter "should be deemed an Institutional facility pursuant to the Building Code and that it is a detention facility," but Southwest Key argues that it should be classified as a residential facility.

HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Austin-based Southwest Key Programs Inc. has sued the city of Houston for allegedly obstructing the nonprofit company’s “good faith efforts to operate an immigrant youth housing shelter” in the city, according to a lawsuit filed Sept. 14.

News surfaced earlier this year that Southwest Key had leased a facility at 419 Emancipation Ave. and applied for a license to house up to 240 children there. The facility — which Star of Hope used a homeless shelter from about 1997 to 2016 and more recently served as a shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Harvey — would be Southwest Key’s fourth immigrant youth shelter in Houston and would be called the Casa Sunzal Shelter, per the lawsuit. The nonprofit contracts with the federal government to operate its 26 such shelters in Texas, Arizona and California.