Lowry Grove housing discrimination complaint dismissed

A housing discrimination complaint over a hotly contested mobile home park sale in St. Anthony has been dismissed by federal housing authorities.

Residents of Lowry Grove, the suburb's only mobile home park, joined two area nonprofits in filing complaints against those involved with last year's sale of the park, which closed June 30 and now awaits redevelopment.

The complainants alleged that the sale to a developer violated the Fair Housing Act and denied homeowners their first right of refusal to buy the park under state law.

They further claimed that the sale had a disparate impact on displaced Latino residents, who they say make up about a quarter of homeowners in Lowry Grove and cannot afford to live in the housing proposed to take its place.

An investigation by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) concluded that "no reasonable cause exists to believe that a discriminatory housing practice has occurred," according to a June 12 letter.

The department wrote that the sale did not have a greater impact on Latino families because "most of the residents of the Park are non-Hispanic and presumably, low income."

Separate court rulings previously have upheld the sale of the park to The Village, an affiliate of Wayzata-based Continental Property Group.

"As I have said from the beginning, these complaints had absolutely no merit and were nothing more than an attempt to delay the sale, park closure and development," Traci Tomas, vice president of The Village, said.

An attorney for the Lowry Grove Residents Association and Aeon, an affordable-housing nonprofit that partnered with residents to match the developer's offer, declined to comment.

Hannah Covington • 612-673-4751