Judge dismisses suit against Minneapolis Public Housing Agency

A lawsuit that might have upended how Minneapolis public housing units are regulated and inspected was dismissed by a Hennepin County judge Thursday.

The suit, brought two years ago by a public housing resident, alleged that residents of Minneapolis Public Housing Agency units are subject to substandard living conditions in a way that tenants of private rental units aren't.

Thursday's dismissal didn't appear to directly address those quality-of-living concerns, but rather the legal argument that MPHA residents are illegally treated differently; the judge ruled that they are not.

The suit attacked the fact that MPHA units aren't subject to the same city inspections that private rentals are.

The MPHA and the city defended their decadeslong policy of a different regimen for enforcing housing standards because the MPHA, unlike a private landlord, is subject to federal regulations by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides most of the MPHA's funding.

In Thursday's ruling, Hennepin County Judge Patrick D. Robben sided with the city and MPHA.

Robben called the policy, in which the MPHA doesn't actually need a rental license from the city, "a planning level decision made upon consideration of public policy and the effects of that policy on advancing the mission of the (city and MPHA)." That decision, he reasoned, could not be targeted with a lawsuit like the one filed in 2021 by Kimberly Lowry, who lived in an MPHA-managed house on 26th Avenue S.

The city maintains that it sends inspectors to respond to tenant complaints made to its 311 service, regardless of whether they live in public or private housing.

In response to Thursday's ruling, the MPHA released a statement that read, in part: "It should be noted that MPHA properties remain subject to various federally-required inspection programs and those inspection programs remain in effect. In March of 2023, MPHA received a near-perfect 98.5 percent in the physical inspection segment of HUD's annual Public Housing Assessment System (PHAS). This marks the highest PHAS physical inspection scores in MPHA's history and builds on the agency's record of achieving 'high performer' status with HUD, dating back to the late 1990s."

Lowry's attorneys did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

In other rental news, Minneapolis officials this week announced its Civil Rights Department has begun enforcing a 2017 change to city code that prohibits discrimination by landlords against people who hold Section 8 public housing vouchers.