Medcalf: St. Paul Lowry Apartments residents who endured shoddy living conditions were easy to ignore

Before Megan Thomas and I began to talk this week about her experience as a former resident of the embroiled Lowry Apartments in St. Paul, she sent me a massive file. It contained information about the building that was sold Wednesday at a sheriff’s auction because of unacceptable maintenance issues.

“The thing that people don’t know about historians is that our job is literally to keep receipts,” said Thomas, the Minnesota DFL historian and history committee co-chair who left the Lowry Apartments this year.

Those receipts included a series of complaints from residents and exchanges between the property owner and the city demanding changes. The file included documented concerns about “trash in the hallways,” a “mouse infestation” and “no glass or screens on windows.” Thomas has pictures of cockroaches frozen in ice cubes, electrical wiring that was punched through walls and inoperable washing machines and dryers.

Thomas, who is disabled, said the majority of the building’s residents are members of a marginalized community and many are people of color.

“It’s a population that made them think they could get away with this,” she said. “And they did for a very long time.”

Too often, folks look the other way when the underprivileged, especially those within communities of Black, Indigenous and people of color, endure inhumane living conditions until those in power are exposed or publicly chastised. But why must things reach this point for folks to care about human beings — our neighbors — forced to live this way?

City and county officials and the property owner, Madison Equities, have publicly sparred ahead of a foreclosure proceeding in a blame game about a complex that, by all accounts, has descended into despair with residents complaining about rodents, roaches, broken elevators and even feces in common areas.

When I worked in that building in the early 2000s in the Star Tribune’s former St. Paul bureau and parked each morning at the Lowry Ramp, public officials frequented the area and it never seemed unsafe or downtrodden. A lot has changed since then, Thomas said.

“I feel like a lot of the people were dehumanized or the people just weren’t seen,” she said. “I use a mobility scooter, so when they would shut down all but one of the elevators, or if something happened to that elevator or something happened in the building, I would be screwed. And there are other wheelchair and mobility device users. It’s a majority Black building. Every marginalized community you can think of, almost everyone was in that building.”

I’m concerned about the people who had to endure these conditions before local officials intervened. Every criticism of Madison Equities is warranted, but it’s also fair to ask if the system and the process attached to it are sufficient in St. Paul to address these matters in a timely manner.

Mayor Melvin Carter has called the conditions “disgusting” as the city works to assist residents, some of whom have questioned why the help didn’t arrive earlier. When I asked to speak with someone in Ramsey County this week, a representative sent a statement.

“Ramsey County learned of the issue facing the residents of the Lowry on Thursday, Aug. 15,” county officials said in the statement, adding another meeting for residents to offer support. “Since we received notification, we have been working closely with the City of Saint Paul on a response plan to provide resources.

“Together with the City of Saint Paul, we hosted an informational meeting for the residents of the Lowry at the Ramsey County Courthouse/Saint Paul City Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 21, where we provided resources, support and answered questions with the information we had available on the situation.”

Kelly Hadac, a lawyer for Madison Equities, countered the city’s and county’s claims, however, by citing “crime,” “rampant homelessness and drug use,” and a struggling business environment in downtown St. Paul for the building’s challenges, according to an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune.

But Thomas also said a property manager at the apartments made her feel as if the complaints — many of which had been made months before the city’s and county’s involvement — were insignificant to Madison Equities because of the makeup of the residents in the building, residents whom Thomas said he called “dummies and morons” who weren’t worthy of attention.

“He was doing it in that buddy-buddy, wink-wink white way that annoys me,” said Thomas, who is white.

The residents of the Lowry Apartments deserve the chance to live in a safe, clean environment, and those who move out deserve the proper support.

The current debate is about who knew what, when they knew it and what they did about it. But another priority is equally important: that everyone should work to make sure this can never happen again.