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St. Paul renters anxious over fate of Lowry Apartments
Residents say they’re worried about their health and safety at vintage St. Paul building.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Residents of the Lowry Apartments Building say they’re in limbo, awaiting word on whether they’ll get to stay in their building which is going through foreclosure proceedings and undergoing code enforcement efforts by the city at the same time.
The building has stood at the corner of 4th Street and Wabasha Street for nearly a century but has fallen on harder times of late. Homeless persons have been squatting in the building, trashing some rooms and stripping items out of the structure.
One of the front windows was shot out recently, and the door to the front lobby no longer locks. The mail room key fobs stopped working, and the elevators in the 11-story structure have intermittently been out of order.
The city has already issued an order revoking the building’s occupancy license by next April if conditions don’t change. Some residents have begun to move out, while others are hoping conditions will improve with City Hall’s intervention.
“It’s been really bad. People have been assaulting me. No security has been doing anything about it. People have been trying to walk into my unit. My kids have been scared,” Celia, a mother of three young children, told reporters Monday.
“A day before I went in for my C section my apartment got flooded out and I was slipping and falling, pregnant. And I’ve been slipping and falling after I had the C section on these stairs.”
She appeared at a press conference hosted by St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter III, immediately after he toured the building with tenants.
“We walked through there and saw trash. We saw flies, insect infestation, rodent infestation, feces just on the floor. They’ve just turned their backs on 100-plus residents who lived here.”
RELATED: St. Paul tenants blindsided by foreclosure, impending sale of affordable apartment building
The city says the building is owned by Madison Equities, the same company that is trying to sell six downtown office buildings including the First National Bank Building. A Madison Equities truck was parked outside the building Tuesday.
But the apartment building is doing business under the name of Lowry Building LLC. That company fell behind on the mortgage payments on the Lowry Apartments, which prompted the lender to seek foreclosure.
A sheriff’s foreclosure sale is set for Sept. 10, according to Mayor Carter, which could lead the building to go into receivership. But Carter wants to expedite the process.
The city filed a motion to initiate receivership as soon as possible. A hearing has been scheduled on that motion for 9:00 a.m. Wednesday in the Ramsey County Courthouse, which is right across the street from the Lowry.
“Once this building is under receivership, my understanding is the tenants will be paying their rent to a receiver, who will then have funds to address some of the issues that are going on inside the building.”
St. Paul attorney Kelly Hadac, issued a statement on behalf of the owners, which read, in part, as follows:
“Lowry has invested millions of dollars over the years to maintain and improve the building. Lowry has also evicted countless tenants from the property over the years who were causing damages.”
“Unfortunately, crime is out of control in downtown St. Paul where the Lowry Building is located. By way of one example, on Sunday, August 25, 2024, criminals ransacked the building causing all sorts of damage, and even stole master keys that the fire inspectors use for the building, among other things.”
Hadac also pointed out that the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, which had occupied two floors of the building for years, moved out last year creating a huge vacancy. A major first floor tenant, Grey Duck Tavern, abruptly closed in July.
Mayor Carter said he was initiating action to repair the elevators, contending that Madison Equities had the resources to do so but failed to do so. On Tuesday afternoon there was an orange sticker on the front entrance to the Lowry announcing that city crews would be removing trash from the building on Wednesday and billing the property owner.
“They are not off the hook. They are responsible. Their business decisions are responsible for the conditions these tenants live in,” Carter remarked.
Jeremy Jourdain was 17 when he was last seen on Halloween 2016.
BEMIDJI, Minn. — The search for Jeremy Jourdain, who was last seen on Halloween in 2016, continues now eight years later.
Jourdain was last seen at a family member’s house in Bemidji, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Affairs. He left the residence near the 500 block of Wood Avenue after midnight and while people followed him, no one was able to find him.
Jourdain was 17 at the time.
Officials said he was wearing a blue and grey sweatshirt, and blue jeans when last seen. He is Native American and is described as 6 foot 5 and 175 pounds.
If you have any information on his whereabouts, you can contact the Bemidji Police Department at (218) 333-9111. Tips can also be sent to 1-833-560-2065, or you can email ojs_mmu@bia.gov.
The organizations say many Asian Americans are planning to vote despite lack of candidate outreach.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Most people have been contacted in some way shape or form by a campaign in the last few weeks. And if the polls are right and the race for president is a dead heat, every vote will matter.
That’s why this is a head scratcher:
According to a September 2024 voter survey by Asian American Pacific Islander Data, 27% of Asian-American voters said they hadn’t been contacted by either political party trying to get their vote. Last spring, earlier in the voting season, it was even more – 42%.
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the fastest growing racial or ethnic group nationwide.
Their voter participation levels are growing too, with 60% of eligible Asian-American voters turning out in 2020. And AAPI Data reports as many as 90% of Asian Americans they surveyed said they plan to vote this cycle.
“Candidates are not reaching out to Asian Americans, which is a huge mistake,” said ThaoMee Xiong, executive and networking director of the Coalition of Asian American Leaders.
She says even though there are more than 200,000 eligible Asian voters in Minnesota, the Asian vote is under-appreciated.
“Neither the Democratic or Republican parties have been reaching out in huge numbers,” Xiong said. “They’re sending general mailers to everyone but … they need it in their native language.”
That’s why CAAL is partnering with two more organizations to keep voter turnout high and reach anyone candidates or advocates missed.
Xor Xiong is from Asian American Organizing Project, which focuses on engaging metro-area teens and young adults.
“Many of our communities are still facing barriers to go to vote,” he said. “There’s been more times than I like to admit in terms of when I was having a conversation over the phones of voters being surprised that they can take time off to go and vote, or they can bring the kids to the polling locations, or they can even bring someone to translate for them.”
“In Ramsey County, because of the large Hmong American population there, the polls in Ramsey County are federally required to provide interpreters and translated materials,” ThaoMee added.
Their nonpartisan campaign, Get Out the Vote for Asian Minnesotans, aims to get people registered and well-informed.
“Throughout Covid, there was a lot of anti-hate around the AAPI community and we are still feeling the impact of that to this day,” said Amanda Xiong, a community organizer with a group known as CAPI USA. “Even if folks are afraid to go to the polls, due to that, we try our best to then educate them around absentee ballots, voting early.”
“And so yes, there is a huge increase in terms of voter turnout, but then why is it still 70% feel as though they don’t belong?”
In 2021, the FBI reported a 168% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes.
In Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, the groups knocked on at least 700 doors in one session alone while keeping safety top of mind.
“We make sure that there’s a car following all the door knockers,” ThaoMee said. “We put everyone on text chain … and we are putting a lot of precautionary measures in place for the day of voting.”
After the election, the CAAL plans to conduct surveys and send the results to county election officials. They’ve done this before and say it led to policy changes this year at the legislature including measures to ensure people have easier access to interpreters.
Minnesota groups work to encourage Latino voters to get to the polls and dispel misinformation.
MINNESOTA, USA — While the secretary of state publishes polling information in the Spanish Language, experts say there are still challenges when it comes to activating Latino voters. Minnesota groups have been hard at work getting voting information out and challenging misinformation.
Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action (COPAL) says it is still working to inspire Latino voters to the polls days before the election.
Eva Peña is one of the volunteers who spent part of Wednesday at their headquarters on Lake Street, calling Latino voters and making sure questions are answered in either English or Spanish.
“I’ve been able to help people figure out if they’re registered or not to vote,” smiled Peña. “And that part has felt super fulfilling for me.”
About 6% of Minnesota’s population is Latino and COPAL’s organizing director Ryan Perez says language isn’t the only barrier. Fear is a hurdle, too.
“There’s some common myths that folks are still facing,” said Perez. “They think, is it unsafe for me to vote? If I vote, will that put my relative in jeopardy?”
Perez says a myth has spread on social media that if you exercise your right to vote as a citizen, it could put undocumented loved ones at risk of deportation.
The secretary of state’s office reaffirmed Wednesday that all eligible Minnesotans should vote without fear of repercussions.
“As much as we think social media seems deregulated and there’s a lot of false information for English speakers, it’s even more so for non-English speakers,” said Perez.
Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera is the Executive director of Common Cause Minnesota. Her organization runs an election protection program and has volunteers flagging misinformation on social media as part of its efforts.
“If I’m your cousin, or I’m the small business owner where you frequent with your family, and you see me reposting something, you’re gonna be more likely than not to believe that because it’s coming from me, right?” she pointed out.
Belladonna-Carrera says there’s an additional challenge in reaching voters with accurate information in rural areas as well.
“It’s that isolation,” Belladonna-Carrera said. “It’s not just geographic isolation, it’s linguistic isolation.”
But volunteers say it’s not just about showing up, but showing leaders that they need the Latino vote.
“They’ll be thinking about, well, how can I make the how can I make life better for our Latino community?” said Peña.
For more resources in Spanish on how to vote, go to the Secretary of State’s website.
