Should public housing renters have the same protections as other tenants? Lawsuit moves ahead.

In Minneapolis, every landlord must be licensed and every rental home examined by a city inspector to ensure it meets basic standards of decency. Unless it’s public housing.

Two women, tenants of the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, are suing the agency and the city. They describe putting up with periodic flooding, sewage backup, persistent mold and mice — problems that have made their homes unlivable at times. But unlike renters in the private market, they say they can’t count on the city for accountability because MPHA is another government entity that has always claimed exemption from the city requirements, which other landlords must follow to legally collect rent.

The agency maintains that its buildings are in good condition, verified by their own inspectors.

But MPHA’s repairs over persistent issues have been low-quality and impermanent, complained Kimberly Lowry, who has rented a single family house in the Nokomis neighborhood since 2009.

“They’ll come and they’ll MacGyver it, they’ll ghetto-rig stuff, where it’s not really fixed,” she said. “For the moment, it’s fixed, but then once they leave, you’re back dealing with the situation by yourself.”

In the past, the city declined to investigate alleged violations in public housing, but it has recently started to grant some complaint-initiated inspections in the midst of litigation, said Lowry’s lawyer, Anna Prakash. However, the city still doesn’t inspect its 6,000 public housing rental units in a consistent way, she said.

Last month, the Minnesota Court of Appeals served Lowry and her co-plaintiff Jeanne Harris, who lives in a north Minneapolis high-rise apartment, a win. In rejecting the MPHA’s claims of immunity from the lawsuit, the court opined that by avoiding city licensure, the public housing agency has sidestepped the fundamental requirements for which the licensing process exists, including ensuring compliance with maintenance and fire code, allowing inspections by the city and protecting tenants from unsafe living conditions.

The city deferred comment to MPHA, whose outside lawyer David Schooler said the public housing authority will appeal the ruling to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Schooler said MPHA inspects its own units annually, while the city conducts elevator and fire inspections. MPHA is one of the nation’s best public housing authorities, he said, with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development giving its properties a 98.5% physical assessment score in 2023.

“MPHA also does not prevent the city from inspecting its properties to enforce city standards and agrees that the city can inspect its properties for compliance,” Schooler said. “Further, MPHA agrees that it has the obligation to meet all city physical condition standards, which it does through its own inspection system.”

Throughout the case, MPHA argued that it isn’t allowed to spend money on rental licenses due to a HUD letter from 30 years ago. In that letter, a federal employee speculated that MPHA shouldn’t pay annual licensing fees if it wasn’t clear what services MPHA would get out of it.

MPHA also protested that if it had to refund tenants all the rents they’ve paid over the years when MPHA lacked a license, it would no longer be able to operate public housing at all.

Harris, the north Minneapolis renter, said when water leaked down into her apartment from the unit above, mold grew in a closet and made it difficult for her to breathe. MPHA did not acknowledge the home mold tests she bought and didn’t heed her pleas to move to another unit, she said.

Both Harris and Lowry said they felt blamed for things they had no control over when they complained about problems with their housing. They said they wanted to fight the attitude that poor people on public assistance should expect no better than what they’re given.

“Many people living in public housing are intimidated by authority. I’m not,” Harris said. " I feel that I’m able to represent the hundreds and thousands of people who have been in similar or even worse conditions than I am, but perhaps they were not articulate enough to voice their complaints and their concerns."